


Kicked Out of the Party 'Cause We Both Hate Everybody

by goodoldfashioned



Category: RedLetterMedia RPF
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Tension, Beach Holidays, Confrontations, Drinking, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Romantic Comedy, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 10:08:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 71,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodoldfashioned/pseuds/goodoldfashioned
Summary: Jay asks Mike to be his fake boyfriend at his sister’s destination wedding on a tropical island. Things quickly get out of hand.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I went with a more romantic comedy tone in this than in previous stories which were more surreal comedy with a side off fluff. Hope everyone (ilu all ;__; !!) will enjoy.
> 
> Also it’s extra important here to mention that **these are the VCR repair shop characters from Half in the Bag**. I made up all the family characters and angst for the purposes of fanfiction romance drama, and this is not supposed to represent any real people or events. Cheers!
> 
> ***

“Hey, um. I need a favor.”

Those are four words Mike never wants to hear, especially from Jay and especially when they’re nearing the end of their work day like they are now.

Mike gives Jay a humorless stare that clearly says: you’re probably not going to get jack shit from me, but go ahead and ask.

“Sooo, you know Lizzie is getting married next month?” Jay says. “On this, like, tropical island, because her fiance is all rich and shit?”

Mike grunts in acknowledgement, distantly bitter about this. He once tried to flirt with Jay’s hot sister and she was not into it. Now she’s marrying some rich guy. Whatever, fuck her.

“Yeah, so. Apparently my parents felt guilty about not paying for anything, since the groom is putting down a small fortune to fly everyone out there and rent like, villas for us and shit, soo. Anyway, they offered to pay for the wedding video. And then they found out that to hire a wedding videographer on this island costs like, ten thousand dollars. Like, literally. So they asked me if I could help out, but I also have to be in the wedding, so. Do you want to come on a free tropical vacation in exchange for doing the taping at the wedding?” 

Mike’s eyebrows go up. That doesn’t sound like a favor Jay needs so much as a windfall that just got dropped right into Mike’s lap. It’s winter in Milwaukee and he hasn’t even been to the beach at Lake Michigan in over a year. 

“I mean, since you’ve been to film school,” Jay adds, as if Mike needs convincing that he can therefore point a video camera at a wedding ceremony. 

“Don’t remind me,” Mike says, glancing around their customer-less repair shop. The whole film school thing didn’t really pan out. 

“Please?” Jay says. “This would really help my folks out.”

“Sure,” Mike says, not wanting to reveal how much he likes this idea just yet. “All expenses paid?”

“Yes, like I said--”

“I mean including incidentals. I can really wreck a mini bar, Jay.”

“I’m well aware of that. Yes, Mike. My parents even said they’d pay you five hundred bucks.”

Hot damn! Even better. Mike is fighting the grin that wants to break out on his face. 

“I suppose I can do you this favor,” he says, lifting one shoulder. “But you’ll owe me one!”

“Ha, yeah.” Jay looks nervous, for some reason, and Mike begins to worry there must be a catch. Jay’s cheeks are getting pink, and he has his arms crossed over his chest in an anxious sort of way. “Umm, so, also. There’s kinda a second part to this favor, too.”

“Oh, god, what? I have to strip at the bachelorette party?”

Jay doesn’t laugh, which is annoying. Mike thought that was pretty funny. 

“Look,” Jay says, giving Mike an angry stare like he’s suddenly pissed off. “I’m well aware that you’re going to give me the biggest possible amount of shit about this for the rest of my fucking life, but I really need your help, so I’m gonna ask anyway.” He swallows, face getting very red now.

Mike’s eyebrows shoot up, eyes widening. Oh ho ho, what have we here? He loves it when Jay gets all embarrassed and flustered. It’s been happening a lot less often in the past year or so, since Jay has gotten in shape and updated his haircut to reflect the hottest fashions of 1998. It’s 2014, but for Jay this is major progress. 

Jay sighs, closes his eyes for a moment and then meets Mike’s gaze again, face blazing now.

“I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend,” he says, mumbling. 

Mike wants to press the pause button on real life. He needs to run that over in his mind a few thousand times to make sure he heard correctly, and then to just really fucking relish it when he accepts that it’s actually happening, ‘cause ohhhhh holy shiiiiit. 

This is the comedy gold that he’s been waiting for all his life.

“Get that fucking look off your face,” Jay says, glowering already. “It’s not funny. Ever since I came out to them and lost weight, everyone in my family acts like those were the only two barriers to me suddenly finding some amazing guy and bringing him around to meet them, and I can’t deal with their shit all week during this wedding thing. If you’re gonna be there anyway, for the filming, it’s easier if I just tell them that me and you are together, since. I mean, like half of them think we are anyway.”

Mike mashes his lips together and hesitates to really lay into Jay just yet. He knows Jay has some kind of seething angst about his romantic history, or lack thereof. Jay didn’t even come out to Mike as gay until the year before, though by then it was beyond a formality, as Mike had figured it out about two months after they met. Mike can remember being fifteen and wanting to fuck a guy for the first time, thinking, am I gay? No, I still want to fuck girls, too. Bi, then. Okay, done.

Or maybe it wasn’t that simple, but it certainly wasn’t the twelve year long doctoral dissertation on the mechanics of reality that Jay painstakingly crafted his coming out into, despite the fact that his family and friends are all godless liberals who would have been happy to see him dump that weight off his shoulders back in high school. Jay seems to be doing a lot better with the whole thing since he finally started to talk about it, and it’s reflected in his suddenly much better looks in a way that makes Mike surprised Jay _hasn’t_ found some amazing guy already, actually. 

“You’re sitting there plotting,” Jay says, looking less angry now, more scared. “It’s making me think you’re going to say yes and then use this an opportunity to ruin my life.”

“Jesus, Jay.” Mike is kinda hurt by that, because Jay seems serious. “Of course I’m not going to ruin your life. Why would I do that? I’m your best friend and your business partner. And your boyfriend, now, too!”

“Oh, god.” Jay sighs. “So that’s a yes? You’ll do both parts of the favor?”

“Oh, I’ll do both parts all right,” Mike says, not even sure what he means. He’s giddy at all the inherent potential in this, but he can’t blow his wad of inappropriate jokes just yet. He’s got to think about this, maybe make some notes.

Jay sighs again, like he knows what Mike is thinking. He probably does. They’ve known each other a long time, through the VCR repair job. At this point they own the shop together. It doesn’t really make any money, but that’s not the point. They’re both have simple tastes when it comes to things that cost money, and they don’t require much to enjoy their lives: really just this, sitting together behind the counter together all day, shooting the shit and arguing about movies, then going out for beers after work if they didn’t just start drinking at the shop, getting hammered and walking home to their separate but not-far-apart dumpy apartments. Lately Mike has been the only one of them getting hammered, since Jay is counting liquid calories in his attempt to get hot or whatever. But that’s okay, because it means Jay can drive Mike home.

It’s a good life, this humble one they’ve made together. Mike’s most embarrassing, most long held secret is that he requires Jay’s near-constant presence at his side and doesn’t need much more to be happy-ish, though beer also helps. It may not actually be much of a secret, since apparently half of Jay’s family thinks they’re fucking.

It would be difficult to miss that Jay the most important person in Mike’s life, regardless of whether people think Mike is also bedding him. Jay is possibly the only one who doesn’t realize it. When they were younger Jay made some comments during their first real fight that crushed Mike’s soul into a fine powder, so Mike doesn’t give Jay that much power over him anymore. Not openly, anyway. It’s better to just snicker at him and sit back like he doesn’t give too much of a shit. This approach keeps Jay in line. He can turn into a little monster pretty fast, if he thinks he can get away with it, and now that he’s hot he’s even more dangerous.

“So what’s our story?” Mike asks when they’re out drinking together after closing up the shop for the night. Jay is indulging in more beer than he has been in recent months, apparently setting the diet aside for the night. 

“Our story?” Jay says. He’s got his elbow on the bartop and his stool turned toward Mike’s. They’re at their favorite place, the bar where Mike has a running tab rather than a check at the end of the night. 

“Yeah, like, our dating story, for your family’s sake. We gotta get our facts straight!”

“Oh, god, you’re right.” Jay groans and puts his hand over his face. He sighs when he removes it and shrugs one shoulder. “Well, we can just use the story they already know. We met at work, became friends, ended up buying the business together. And then, you know. They can fill in the details from there.”

“Nah, that won’t be good enough, trust me. Especially when people are in wedding-mode and want to hear about love story shit. They’re going to want to know when things changed between us. When was our first kiss. Why didn’t we tell them till now. That kind of stuff.”

Jay groans and looks truly miserable. He gulps down the rest of his beer and orders another one. The bartender brings a refill for Mike, too, not needing to ask to know that he’ll want one.

“I’m the superior writer,” Mike says. “So I’ll make something up, how’s that?”

Jay narrows his eyes. 

“No.” 

“Why not?”

“First of all, you being the superior writer is super debatable, and also you have a sick sense of humor, especially when it comes to humiliating me. Our get-together story would probably be, like, us making out over a dead hooker’s body.”

Mike guffaws and Jay smiles a little, pleased with himself for getting a laugh out of him.

“Jay, give me a little credit. I know how to hone my narrative to suit the audience. And this audience is your family and friends. So it won’t be anything fucked up like that. Although-- you are kinda fucked up, and they know that, so that might not be the worst idea, going all dark and twisted.”

“I don’t want dark and twisted,” Jay says, looking irritated again. “That’s my taste in movies, not a reflection of my real life.”

“Mhmm,” Mike says, doubtfully. He has no idea what Jay is like in the sack and has wondered about it quite a bit. 

“Let’s keep it simple,” Jay says. “My family knows I don’t like to talk about this shit, anyway.”

“Doesn’t stop them from badgering you about it,” Mike says, because that’s the whole point of this fake boyfriend ploy: to stop at least some of the badgering. One kind, anyway.

“God, you’re right.” Jay glares at him. He hates when Mike is right. Mike grins, triumphant. 

“Simple works, though,” Mike says. “We can say we got hot for each other at work one day and that was that. So, that was our first kiss. At the shop, just. In the back room or something. And it’s been all wine and roses since then. We didn’t bring it up until now because we weren’t sure where it was going, but now we know. We’re not just fuck buddies. We’re boyfriends and we’re in love.”

Mike hears himself and makes himself stop talking. Jay looks like he’s not sure what kind of expression he should have on his face right now. 

“That works,” Jay says, muttering. “Sure.”

“And uhh, let’s see. We’re not living together because you’re an uptight neat freak who panics over dust.”

“I don’t-- Shut up. But actually, yeah, that works. They know you’re a slob and that I prefer not to live in filth.” 

“You can’t even leave a dirty dish in the sink for two seconds!”

“Why bother leaving it there when you can just wash it and get it over with? You’re right there at the fucking sink anyway! Is there a fire somewhere that you have to put out before you wash the dish? Huh? It attracts bugs if you leave dirty dishes out. Even briefly!”

“God, listen to yourself.” Mike shakes his head and grins, drinks from his beer. “Wait, are we having a lovers' quarrel?”

“Ughhh.” Jay gulps from his pint glass. “I’m already regretting this, like, a lot.”

“Ha, yeah right. This is a blast. Get into it, Jay! Speaking of lovers' quarrels, have we ever had one? Is that part of the story?”

Jay gives Mike a sideways glance that makes Mike regret saying that. 

Yeah. They don’t really talk about that old fight. Best to avoid the subject.

“I say no,” Mike says before Jay can answer. “We’ve been super happy this whole time. How many months have we been together?”

“Five,” Jay says, and Mike has to look away, up at the muted TV over the bar that’s showing a hockey game. 

Five months, well, ha ha ha. That was the duration of their ‘break up,’ back in the day. But maybe Jay doesn’t remember the exact length of time they were apart and his response was just a random coincidence. He doesn’t seem to have the same amount of lingering angst that Mike does about certain things that were said back then. 

They finish up at the bar soon after that and head home, both regretting that they’re too drunk to drive because a bastard of a snow storm has started up and the wind is beating them back as they walk toward their apartments, heads lowered.

“Jesus, I’m glad we’re doing this!” Mike shouts over the wind.

“This?” Jay says, squinting at him as snow blows into his face.

“The beach thing! The tropical island! Get me the fuck out of here, ya know? When do we leave, by the way?”

“Exactly a month from now, on the fifth of March.” 

“Oh, jesus. What is it with fives?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. Great. And we’ll be there for, what, a week?”

“Just four days. There’s a bunch of pre-gaming shit to do beforehand. I can help you film those parts. I just need to be in the ceremony, so I can’t do that part.”

“Aww,” Mike says, accidentally out loud, thinking of Jay in a tiny tuxedo, all trussed-up and trim now, with his hair gel and so forth. 

“You need to buy a suit, by the way,” Jay says. “They’re expensive to rent, on the island.” 

“I have a suit,” Mike says. 

“What-- From when?”

Jay gives Mike a doubtful glance that says, pretty clearly: would it even still fit you?

“Fine,” Mike says, hating him, though he’s not wrong. It wouldn’t. “But you’re paying for it.”

“Yeah, I can do that.” Jay grins like the idea of being able to pick out clothes for Mike is his dearest dream, and Mike’s rage subsides. “We’ll go tomorrow, okay?”

“Wonderful. We can do it on our lunch break.” It isn’t uncommon for their lunch breaks to stretch to three or four hours if they’re running an errand or seeing a movie together. Owning the business comes with the perk of keeping whatever hours they please.

They get to the street corner where they always part ways, and Mike stands with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, giving Jay a once-over. Jay is sniffling due to the cold, rubbing his gloved hand under his nose. He looks drunk. 

“Are you really going to be able to handle this?” Mike asks, because he is also drunk.

“What?” Jay asks.

“Being someone’s boyfriend. Even for pretend.” 

If Jay has ever had a boyfriend or anything resembling one, he’s kept it secret from Mike, and he never had a girlfriend during the godawful denial years.

“It’s you,” Jay says. “So, yes. I’ll be fine.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That I already know how to act around you? What’s going to be hard about it?”

“Jay, we act like friends. This is different. You’re gonna have to let me sell it, you know. My arm is gonna be around you.”

Jay blinks up at Mike. Already, he looks like he definitely won’t be able to handle this.

Mike is embarrassingly pleased by the idea that Jay will be stammery and awkward and constantly overcome with red-faced, nervous laughter when his little shoulders are squeezed under Mike’s massive arm. This is going to be great.

“I’ll be fine,” Jay says, frowning. “I know you’re gonna do your best to embarrass me--”

“Jay, Jay.” Mike doesn’t deny this. He shrugs. “It’ll be fun.”

“Yeah, for one of us. Anyway, see you tomorrow.”

“Yep, yeah.”

“Byyyyyyeee.”

Mike turns for his place, feeling weird. He’s pumped about the free vacation and five hundred bucks. But there’s that number again: five. Seems like a bad omen.

He tells himself it’s nothing, and when he gets home he goes to the fridge in his apartment. He’s out of beer, so he just gets in bed, passes out, and dreams about palm trees, suit jackets bursting open at the seams around his beer gut, and Jay laughing either at or with him, maybe both.


	2. Chapter 2

The rest of the month passes as usual: few customers, lots of downtime, most of it spent together, and the weather a depressing mix of blizzard-level snowfall and clogged gray skies overhead. Mike attempts to drink less in the weeks leading up to their departure, thinking of being on a beach and potentially wearing swim trunks, and also of the suit that Jay helped him buy. It was expensive, which didn’t seem to phase Jay when he slapped down his credit card to pay for it, and it looks pretty good on Mike, he must admit, beer gut and all. 

By the time they’re in line at airport security Mike is feeling pretty fucking giddy about this whole thing, and not just because he’s come up with like eighty-five great ways to gently embarrass Jay without ruining his life. They’re surrounded by a slew of other Wisconsinites who are visibly thrilled to be leaving the country during another bleak winter, most people in cheery vacation mode and having already changed into clothes that will only be appropriate at their destinations: old couples in Jimmy Buffett t-shirts and teenagers in open toed shoes, half the people in line acting like they’re already on the way to the beach. 

Jay is the only one in line who’s acting like he’s going to a funeral march. Mike tries not to take it personally. They make it through security without any drama, and Jay shakes his head when Mike offers to buy him snacks for the plane. It’s a relatively short flight to the Caribbean island where they’ll be sequestered on the grounds of some luxe resort where the wedding and everything else will take place. 

“You think this dude is right for your sister?” Mike asks after takeoff, when Jay is tensely browsing through the options on his in-flight entertainment TV. 

“Rich?” Jay says. 

“Yeah, I know he’s rich,” Mike says, annoyed when he thinks about how Lizzie never really looked twice at him even when he turned on the charm, even back when Mike was pretty great-looking himself, which he only realized in bitter hindsight. “I mean what kind of guy is he, beyond his net worth.”

“No, his name is Rich.”

“Oh. Wait, what?” 

“That’s his name, like, short for Richard. At first I didn’t really get what Lizzie sees in him. He’s fat and bald.”

“Oh, god, of course he is!” 

Mike hates rich people. He’s going to be snarling at so many of them all week, at this creepily sanitized resort. 

“Yeah, but once I got to know him, I understood why she’s with him,” Jay says. “He’s cool. I think you’ll really like him, actually.”

“Uhh, I doubt it. Is his whole family rich, the kind of prick who comes from money?”

“No, he’s totally self-made. He invented some kind of video game controller and made a fortune off selling it, years ago.” 

“Hmph.”

“Try not to be a dick to everyone, please,” Jay says. He’s giving Mike a sincerely pleading look that Mike appreciates. Jay had _better_ beg him to do this right. Mike holds all the power between them now, finally. “Remember, you’re supposed to be in a good mood, uh. ‘Cause we got together and we’re happy about it.” 

“Like I’ll be the one who has a hard time selling that,” Mike says. “You’re going to be all green with horror if I so much as put my hand on your shoulder.”

“I am not! Why do you want to act like I’m some kind of-- Boy who lives in a bubble? I’ll be fine, Mike. I told you, if you-- Just don’t go overboard, okay?”

“What’s overboard.” 

Because Mike has a feeling they have very different definitions of that. 

“Like--” Jay goes red. He’s obviously been dreading laying these rules down and yet knowing that he needs to do it, because Mike will take every opportunity to run straight into the endzone if he doesn’t. “You can touch me in incidental, normal ways,” Jay says, jaw tight. “But--”

“What’s ‘normal,’ really, Jay?” Mike asks, cocking his head. He’s already having the time of his life and they’re still in the air, barely twenty minutes out from Milwaukee. 

Jay wrinkles his nose and snarls a little. 

“You can’t just grab me and kiss me,” Jay says, face blazing now. “So don’t.” 

“I almost think it would be weird if we _didn’t_ kiss at least _once_ in front of your folks.”

“No. Mike, stop!”

“Okay, okay.” Mike laughs low in his belly and holds his hands up. “Just teasing, Jay. There’s no way you asked me to do this without knowing I’d give you a hard time.”

“Like there’s anyone else in my life who I could ask to do this,” Jay says, and that kind of hurts, or maybe it’s cause for celebration? Jay has other friends, mostly hipster shitheads Mike can’t stand, but none of them are anywhere equal to Mike’s place in Jay’s life. 

Mike also likes to think, though maybe he’s wrong, that despite all the hell Mike gives him, Jay doesn’t trust any of his other friends as much as Mike. He’d rather be utterly humiliated in front of Mike than even a little exposed around anyone else, because Mike won’t judge him, not really, not in the ways that matter.

“Are we gonna dance together at the wedding?” Mike asks. 

“No. We’ll have our cameras, we’ll be recording that shit. Not living it.”

“Hmm.” Mike says, instead of: There’s a real sick metaphor for your life in there somewhere, Jay. “Well, we’ll just feel it out. I’m sure it will develop organically, just like our back room love-making at the repair shop did.” 

Jay groans and throws his head back against his seat, eyes closed. 

“No pet names,” he says, whirling back on Mike with a glare. 

“Too late, I already developed six good ones.”

“No--”

“Jayby, that’s my favorite, as in, yes, sir, that’s my Jayby--”

“No! Mike!” 

Mike laughs and jabs Jay in the shoulder with his finger. Jay is all huffy and not finding the humor in this, just like Mike knew he wouldn’t.

For most of the plane ride they watch movies. Mike picks all the same ones that Jay does, so they can discuss them afterward, sometimes regretting this because Jay’s taste ranges from exactly in line with Mike’s to total garbage that Mike can’t roll his eyes hard enough at. 

As soon as they land, Jay has a dozen text messages from his waiting relatives, all asking when he’s arriving at the rental house on the resort grounds.

“Okay,” Jay says when they’re in the backseat of an island taxi cab, Mike’s nose pressed to the window and his eyes big as he takes it all in: lush tropical foliage and sprawling white sand beaches, also the occasional pocket of poverty just glimpsed between the manicured resort areas. “Mike, pay attention,” Jay says, tugging on his arm. 

Of course Jay is totally unaffected by their arrival here. He doesn’t care about things like natural beauty, since his soul is some kind of gory crime scene that only loves grossness. Unfortunately, this is one of the things Mike loves about Jay. He’s aware that it makes him some kind of masochist. 

“What?” Mike says. “The plan’s in place. I know what to do, relax.”

Jay’s leg is bouncing crazily. He’s nervous, hands fidgeting over his knees. Why he gives so much of a fuck about what his family thinks of him is baffling to Mike, who sees his own sister maybe once a year and his parents never. Jay didn’t have a shitty childhood like Mike did, and his parents aren’t judgmental assholes, so far as Mike can tell. They spoiled Jay fucking rotten as a kid, to a degree that was maybe occasionally kinda sorta negligent, but that’s just Mike’s armchair analysis based on what he’s heard from Jay, who characterizes all of it like he was the luckiest kid in the world, aside from the part where he lived in rural Wisconsin. 

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Jay says suddenly. He chews his lip and looks at Mike like he just realized that he’s tied to some train tracks and needs to be rescued. 

“What’s the big deal?” Mike asks, and then regrets the question, because asking Jay that, about this kind of shit, has always felt mean. 

“I don’t know-- No, it’s fine.” Jay winces and takes a deep breath, opening his eyes again when he exhales. “Yeah, it’ll be okay. It’s easier this way. They’ll all be, like, oh, we knew it. They’ll believe it, ‘cause it’s you.” 

Huh? Mike almost says. But he supposes this makes sense. He reaches over and puts his hand on Jay’s knee. 

“Just practicing,” he says when Jay goes stock-still, eyes widening like he’s been sighted by his natural predator. “This okay?” Mike asks, tightening his grip a little and swallowing around the sudden dryness in his throat. 

Jay shocks the fuck out of him by not shrugging or muttering that it’s fine but putting his hand on top of Mike’s. 

“Yeah,” Jay says, moving his fingers in a little twitch that makes Mike-- Something. He’s not sure what this physical reaction is, exactly. It’s not arousal, quite. It’s more like being stabbed, looking down at the knife, and wanting to say, please do that again. “Practicing,” Jay says, looking down at their hands.

Jay’s hand is tiny compared to Mike’s, and noticing this makes Mike more traditionally aroused, which probbbbbably isn’t good.

Only maybe it is, because they’re pulling up to the massive security gate of the resort where they’ll be staying, almost there, and when they greet Jay’s family it should look like they’re flustered and weirdly into each other, right?

Right.

Jay pulls his hand away when the resort’s giant gate starts to slide open for their cab. He sighs and looks out the window, then back at Mike.

“I mean, regardless,” Jay says, “I’m glad you’re here. Thanks.” 

“Yeah.” Mike clears his throat and shifts in his seat, not sure what is happening anymore. He takes his hand off Jay’s leg. “Why, though-- You’re, like, nervous about this?”

“No.” 

Jay’s guard goes back up like a gate crashing shut between them. Mike could swear that it instantly makes Jay’s eyes more cold grey, less almost-green. Mike has given it some thought over the years, as it’s a look he’s very familiar with. Jay’s eyes soften a little when he sees Mike deflating in response to this look, and he shrugs one shoulder. 

“I mean, I guess I’m a little nervous,” Jay says. “Just about how they’re going to react to me finally telling them I’m with someone. You have no idea the shit they’ve given me over the years. Not my parents or my sister so much but the rest of them. Well, and my dad’s pretty bad about it, actually. Still single, Jay?” he says, doing an imitation of his father’s thicker midwestern accent. 

Mike has met Jay’s dad a few times over the years, and he seems okay but is also the kind of guy one pictures after hearing that he divorced Jay’s mother when Jay was a toddler and Lizzie was an infant, explicitly to follow his dream of being a tour boat captain on Lake Michigan. He’s still pretty good looking for his age with a full head of hair, squinty-eyed and charming but also kind of squirrelly. 

“Isn’t your dad sort of forever alone himself?” Mike asks, because he’s pretty sure he never remarried or even lived with a girlfriend after he left Jay’s mother. 

“Yeah, but he fucks around with women in the meantime, and he looks at me like he knows I don’t. I mean, now he literally knows that, since I came out to him, but it’s the same thing with guys since then. He’s just like, been on any dates lately? It’s always, like, the second or third thing that comes out of his mouth when we see each other, like he’s so worried about it for some fucking reason, you know, even my mom isn’t like that.”

Jay seems to hear himself and stops talking. He gives Mike a nervous glance like he almost forgot Mike was there, hearing that. 

“But whatever,” Jay says, leg still bouncing. “No, it’ll be fine. They’ll all think I was in love with you and holding out for you this whole time. They’ll accept that as the explanation and leave me the fuck alone about it for once.”

Mike has to look away because hoo boy, what? He feels prickly with nerves himself, suddenly. 

“It’ll be okay,” Mike says when they’re slowing to a stop in front of the address they gave the driver: an oceanfront villa on a high cliff, near a golf course, everything in sight either blinding white or smooth green, perfectly manicured. “Hey,” Mike says, reaching over to poke Jay’s shoulder. “I won’t fuck this up for you. I promise.” 

Jay smiles shakily and exhales, nodding.

They get out of the van after paying the driver and approach the front door with their bags. Before they can get there, Jay’s sister throws the door open and comes out beaming, arms held out for Jay. 

Mike stands back and watches them hug each other, realizing as he does that he’s only ever seen Jay hug Lizzie hard like this, with no awkward reservations or visible sense of obligation. This might make selling Mike’s fake physical affection with Jay kinda difficult, but whatever happened in the car when their hands touched was convincing enough to make Mike’s dick twitch, so. Perhaps it will be okay.

Or a total disaster, in a different way?

Mike grins at Lizzie when she gives him a lukewarm smile of recognition. She doesn’t like him. Maybe it’s the old unwanted flirtation, or the fact that Mike comes off as a cocky jerk who bosses Jay around when they’re in public together. Nobody can ever seem to figure out that Jay is actually the one who drags Mike around on a chain. Which is good, because Mike doesn’t want people knowing that, Jay included.

“Thank you so much for doing this,” Lizzie says to Mike, nodding to all the camera equipment he’s lugging.

“My stuff’s really not top of the line,” Mike says. “But, you know. For five hundred bucks, it’s pretty good.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Lizzie says, looking annoyed by him already. She turns back to Jay and smiles again. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she says. “Dad brought some weird woman,” she adds, lowering her voice.

“Oh god,” Jay says. “She probably just wanted the free vacation.”

“Exactly. Ugh. Her name is _Edith_.” Lizzie says so as if this is the first strike against her.

“What is she, like, seventy?”

“Are you kidding, she’s barely older than us. Come in, we’re making drinks.” 

Mike perks up at the sound of that and heads for the door, but before he can get there Jay stops him, grabbing his arm and motioning for Lizzie to come closer. 

“Before we do, uhh,” Jay says. “I should tell you something, and you can tell everyone else, okay?”

Jay’s face is turning red. Oh no, Mike thinks. Did he seriously wait to break the news in person?

Jay gives Mike a desperate look, and for a moment Mike thinks he’s being asked to drop this bomb himself, but then Jay speaks again, looking back to Lizzie.

“Mike and I are together,” he says, rushing this out, his grip on Mike’s arm tightening. It feels like a cry for help. Mike steps closer to him. 

Lizzie gives Mike a look that’s somewhere between disbelief and ‘oh god, of course.’ Mike raises his eyebrows in reply like, yeah, that’s right, lady. I’m boning your brother. Deal with it.

“Oh,” she says, and she frowns at Jay. “What-- When? Why didn’t you tell me? Did this happen on the plane?”

Mike guffaws at the mental image of trying to mile-high-club Jay in one of those tiny airplane bathrooms, the door flinging open while he was in mid-thrust because there’s no way they could both fit.

Though that’s probably not what she means.

“It happened sort of gradually,” Jay says, careful to keep his voice low. Lizzie left the villa’s front door open, and Mike can hear the voices of others inside, also beer bottles popping open. “Just, um, you know, we waited to tell everyone until we were sure we wanted it to be official and not just, like, a lark.”

A lark?? Mike almost loses it laughing at that choice of word, and he feels like Lizzie can see it on his face when she turns her scrutinizing gaze back to him.

“You’re quiet,” she says. 

“Jet-lagged,” Mike says.

“Wasn’t it like a five hour flight?”

“Still felt like a long trip, door to door,” Jay says, and he’s bright red now. 

Mike realizes why Jay didn’t do this until now: it’s hard for him to lie to his little sister. They’re very mutually protective of each other, so close in age that they almost grew up as fraternal twins.

“Wow, so-- You two are like, a couple?” Lizzie looks back and forth between them and seems to warm to the idea a little. Mike tries to assist in this by moving closer to Jay, so that their arms brush together. “I mean, officially,” Lizzie says, smirking. “You know everyone calls him your boyfriend already,” she says to Jay, meaning Mike.

Jay groans and nods. “Yeah, you guys were right all along. Congratulations.”

“You have to tell me all about this later,” Lizzie says to Jay, and she shakes her head, giving Mike another suspicious look. “Anyway, come in!”

“Just-- Don’t make a big announcement about it right away,” Jay says hurriedly, following after her. “Okay? Just kinda spread the word, like, discreetly. I mean, Mom and Arnold already know--”

“You told them before me?” Lizzie asks, whirling on Jay with a disbelieving look.

“I had to, they asked me how many beds we needed in our room!”

Oh good lord, Mike thinks. So, Jay’s response was. What? One??

Lizzie doesn’t really respond to this, as they’re already crossing into the foyer and there’s a lot of loud greetings being shouted, and people coming forward to give Jay hugs that he absorbs more stiffly. Mike knows some of these people but not many, and he feels as awkward as he always does in any social setting that isn’t just him and Jay slumped at a bar together and ignoring everyone else while they talk. This seems to be the home base of Jay’s mom and stepfather Arnold, based on who’s around. Jay’s father must be staying elsewhere with Edith.

“This is our videographer,” Jay’s mother says when she’s introducing Mike to some aunt, Jay having abandoned him for greetings on the other side of the room. “Also Jay’s best friend, and they own the repair shop business together. And, also, his boyfriend!” she adds, smiling at Mike with approval that also kind of looks like uncertainty. “Recently, right?”

“Uh-huh,” Mike says. He casts a desperate look over his shoulder at Jay, who is laughing with Lizzie and a fat, balding guy who must be Rich. “It’s been really good,” Mike blurts, turning back to Jay’s mom and aunt. “Um, to finally. Admit our feelings. We’ve been close for a really long time.” Oh no, he’s rambling. He’s holding a beer but has only managed a few sips so far, and wants to chug it down now. “So, yeah. It was a long time coming.” 

“No kidding!” Jay’s mother says. “I remember Jay crying his little heart out when you two had that fight, all those years ago. Arnold and I had never seen him torn up like that over _anything_. He almost crashed his car!” She says this part to the aunt, as if Mike must already know. “I had to go pick him up from where he’d pulled over on the side of the road, and he was just sobbing over the steering wheel, my poor baby. All I could get out of him was, ‘I fought with Mike and we’re not friends anymore.’ I thought, oh no. He must be in love, finally.”

“Wait-- What?” Mike can feel how big his eyes have gotten. 

“Oh my gosh, listen to me!” Jay’s mother lifts her half-empty margarita glass and winces. “I’ve had a few too many, I think. But that was all so long ago. I was so happy for him when you two mended things, and now this! You guys were always going to end up together, right? I’m really just so thrilled for you both. Cheers!”

She lifts her margarita glass and Mike manages to weakly click his beer bottle against it, then against the aunt’s wine glass. His hand is shaking. He turns and nearly finishes the beer in three enormous gulps, watching Jay approach from the other side of the room with Lizzie and the fat guy.

“Mike, this is Rich,” Jay says, gesturing to the dude with his arm around Lizzie’s waist, which is pretty fucking wild considering Lizzie looks like she could be a movie star and Rich looks like he should be making change in a toll booth in Jersey. But of course, the guy has money, so there you go. 

“Mike,” Rich says, putting his hand out for a shake. “Good to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“You have?” Mike glances at Lizzie, who shrugs. 

Mike can’t even deal with this mundane shit right now, after what Jay’s mother just told him. The idea that Jay wasn’t just coldly ignoring him and suffering maybe a hundreth of the emotional hell Mike went through during those five months when they weren’t speaking has just rocked Mike’s fucking world to the core, is all. 

Jay _cried_?? Ever, for one, but, also, over Mike? He’d needed his mom to come pick him up because he was so distraught that he couldn’t operate his car?

“What are you looking at me like that for?” Jay asks, alarmed by whatever expression Mike has on his face, somewhere between shock, horror, and envious rage that Jay was able to conceal his actual experience of their break-up so well for all these years. He’s always shrugged the fight off like it was normal best friend stuff and not something that sent Mike into a depressive spiral that he’s sometimes still not sure he ever entirely climbed out of. Jay started the fight, but Mike was the one who ended up scaling all the walls Jay put up around himself to repair their friendship afterward, because by then Mike would have done anything to rid himself of the five month long stomachache he’d had since Jay severed things between them as if it was easy for him. 

“What?” Mike barks when he realizes everyone is staring at him in awkward silence, Rich looking concerned and Lizzie annoyed. Jay looks worried, though not necessarily about Mike. He gives Mike a warning look, silently asking him to stop being weird. 

“Why don’t I show you guys your room,” Jay’s mom says. “You can put your stuff away and then have a drink with us, yeah? C’mon up.”

They follow her up a white-carpeted staircase down a spacious hallway on the second floor, into a large bedroom with views of the ocean and an en suite bathroom. There’s only one bed, but at least it’s massive, some kind of California king. The bedsheets are bright white. 

“We actually gave you guys the master,” Jay’s mother says, indicating the room they’re in. “Lizzie is staying next door with her bridesmaids, and me and Arnold wanted the downstairs bedroom, on account of his hip and so forth. Anyhow, I’ll let you two get freshened up!”

She leaves, shutting the door behind her. Mike listens for her footsteps on the stairs, and waits until she’s fully departed the second floor to meet Jay’s eyes.

“What?” Jay asks. He’s set his bags down and is standing near the bed, only blushing a little. “Why are you giving me looks like you want to kill me, suddenly?”

“I’m not.”

“Did my mom say something to you? Oh, god, what? Did she say something weird?”

Mike considers bringing up what she did say, then shakes his head, keeping that card in his pocket for now. He needs more time to consider how to play it. 

“I just hate chit chat and socializing,” he says. 

“Yeah, yeah. So do I, but they’re not that bad.” Jay sighs and looks at the bed. “Sorry about this,” he says, muttering. “I didn’t think I could, uh. Ask for separate beds and still sell our story.”

“It’s fine,” Mike says. 

“I could sleep on the floor.”

“Jay, shut up. That bed is enormous and you’re tiny. I’ll live.”

Jay doesn’t usually like being reminded that he’s tiny, but he seems to be coming around on it since getting in shape, and he only smiles at Mike’s mention of it now. 

They return to the party downstairs, and Mike makes a rum and Coke for both of them, heavy on the rum. For the most part they stick together, cycling between relatives who want to know how Jay is doing, and just who is this strapping man on his arm all of a sudden?

“This is your lover?” Jay’s grandma says to Jay at one point, giving Mike a once-over. She seems benign enough about the whole thing, but who can really tell when it comes to the elderly?

“Uh, yeah,” Jay says. “We own the business together, back in Milwaukee.”

“I told him when we signed the LLC agreement that it was the closest I’d ever get to locking him into a marriage contract,” Mike says, which is true. It was a joke that didn’t play well at the time. “But, hey. Look at us now!”

“Oh, you two are getting married, also?” Jay’s grandma asks, giving them a grim old person smile, as if she likes the idea.

“No, no,” Jay says. “We just, uh, just started officially dating five months ago.”

“But you’ve known each other so long, haven’t you? How much more time after that do you need, after all those years?”

“Yeah,” Mike says, knowing it would be _way_ over the line but wishing he was mean enough to drop to one knee and propose to Jay in front of everyone. The idea that Jay bawled his eyes out over their fight and never offered any hint to Mike that he’d even missed him all that much while they were apart is almost enough to put Mike over the edge into that kind of meanness, but not quite.

“Gay marriage isn’t legal in Wisconsin,” Jay says, face burning. “Unfortunately,” he adds, voice tight.

“Hey, maybe soon, though!” Mike says. “They’re taking it to the Supreme court, I hear.”

“Where’d you hear about that?” Jay asks, boggling at him.

“It’s true, isn’t it? Some case got filed against the state law?”

“Yeah, but--” Jay shakes his head at Mike as if he’s not allowed to know about this for some reason, then turns back to his grandma. “Anyway, uh. No, we’re not engaged.”

“Yet!” Mike says, and this gives the old lady a laugh.

The party moves out to the back patio as the sun begins to sink. The backyard area is largely comprised of a giant infinity pool and an in-ground jacuzzi, and most of the younger people in the group have changed into swimsuits so they can get into the pool, Jay and Lizzie included. Mike sits at a nearby patio table under a massive umbrella, drinking more beer, not in the mood to expose his bare gut to these people right now. 

He watches Jay acting like he’s a kid again in the pool with his sister, both of them laughing and playing stupid games with their many cousins, who all have either naturally perfect teeth like Lizzie or distressing ones that make Mike a little nostalgic for pre-dental work Jay. When they met, Jay’s look was ‘feral farm boy as styled by Fred Durst,’ but he had a kind of unshakable confidence despite that, and was one of the few people Mike knew back then who genuinely seemed like he didn’t give a single fuck about what other people thought of him, and to hell anyone who had a problem with it. Mike had a habit back then of describing Jay as small but fierce, partly just to irritate Jay and to remind him he was small, whereas Mike wasn’t. It used to feel like the one thing Mike had over him, and sometimes it still does. 

“Hey, how’s it going?”

Mike looks up to see Rich taking one of the other seats at the patio table. Rich falls into it with a huff and wipes sweat from his brow. 

“Going fine,” Mike says, not really in the mood for this guy, or for anyone. “Thanks for, uh. Hosting me.”

“Think nothing of it! Thanks for doing our wedding video. Lizzie says you’ve got a lot of experience behind a camera.” 

“Not really with weddings, but. Yeah, I’ll do a good job for you guys. I promised Jay.”

“She told me you guys have known each other for like, ten years?”

“Almost fifteen, actually.”

“Wow. And you’re just now together, uhh. Romantically?”

“Yep. If you’re trying to suggest that it took us so long because we’re emotionally stunted manchildren, you’re right. At least in Jay’s case.”

Rich laughs hard, in a way that surprises Mike and then makes him almost kinda like this guy, because people who laugh at Mike’s jokes are the only people he likes.

“Hey, I get ya,” Rich says. “I’m almost forty. I thought I’d never get married.”

“How’d you guys meet?” Mike asks, gesturing to Lizzie with his beer bottle.

“At work. She did marketing stuff for my company.”

Oh, his big fancy _company_ , with its need of marketing consultants, of course. Mike wants to roll his eyes, rescinding some of his tentative respect for this guy.

“I run a company, too,” Mike says, aware that he’s setting himself up for humiliation. “With Jay. You may have heard of it. Uh, from Lizzie. Lightning Fast VCR Repair. Only VCR repair shop in all of Milwaukee.” 

“Yeah, she mentioned that,” Rich says. “That’s cool. Milwaukee’s all right. I grew up near Chicago. You a Packers fan?”

“Fuck yeah, are you some kind of Bears fan heathen?”

“Uhh, I wouldn’t call myself a ‘fan’ so much as a hateful, embittered follower of their many failures.” 

Mike laughs at this, against his will.

He ends up talking to Rich for quite a while, eventually turning his back on the pool frollicking to focus on their conversation. When it starts to really get dark out Jay comes over, dripping, to tell Mike they need to get ready for dinner.

Normally Mike would tell Jay to fuck off, because he’s in the middle of something and having a good time chatting with this Rich character, who maaaybe actually deserves Lizzie after all, because he’s smart and funny and friendly in a way that doesn’t feel fake, but since he’s pretending to be Jay’s boyfriend, Mike has to grunt and agree to do what he says. 

“See you there,” Rich says when he gets up, because apparently everyone in the so-far assembled wedding group is meeting at some restaurant on the resort grounds in an hour. 

“I knew you’d like Rich,” Jay says when they’re up in the room together, Jay still wearing his wet swimsuit and rubbing a towel through his hair. He’s giving Mike an obnoxious I-told-you-so look that doesn’t bother Mike as much as it normally would, maybe because Jay is half naked and in better shape than Mike even realized. 

“Yeah,” Mike says, dragging his eyes away when he realizes he’s staring. “So, which of us gets the shower first? Or should we just save time and take one together?”

“I’m first,” Jay says, ignoring the joke.

If it even was one, really. 

Mike feels unsure, suddenly, and weird after Jay disappears into the bathroom with his many toiletries and a stack of clothes to change into after he’s done. Mike sits on the bed and thinks again about what Jay’s mother said earlier. Is she just remembering wrong? Was Jay actually upset about something else? Mike doesn’t think so. He thinks he’s been conned, this whole time, into believing Jay was casual about their reunion because he could take it or leave it, that he agreed to buy the business with Mike only because he had nothing else going on career-wise, and that he asked Mike to do this boyfriend thing solely out of desperation to seem as normal as possible around his family. 

Because since when has Jay cared about seeming normal? His parents are the ones who let him rent depraved arthouse horror movies from the age of like eight onward. Maybe they didn’t sit in the room and watch them with him, but they must have had some idea that their son was-- Whatever Jay is. Different, weird, and they encouraged it, didn’t try to change him. So who is he doing this fake boyfriend shit for, really?

By the time they’re on their way to dinner in the backseat of Jay’s mother’s rented car, Mike is more than ready for another beer or five. Despite being the tallest one in the car, Mike somehow ended up in the middle seat with Jay on his left and Jay’s annoying cousin Josh on his right. Jay and Josh are leaning over Mike to talk about some bullshit that Mike isn’t interested in, something to do with collecting vinyl records. Jay is pressed up against Mike in a way that’s not affectionate so much necessary, so he can angle himself over the obstacle that is Mike to talk to his cousin, and Mike is annoyed enough by it that he slides his elbow fully into Jay’s lap, which shuts Jay up in mid-sentence for a moment before he gulps audibly and continues, stammering a little.

Mike smirks at his reflection in the rear view mirror. He decides he’s going to get a little drunk at dinner and have some fun with this.

The restaurant has the same too-slick stylishness to the point of having no style-ness that the resort overall seems to feature, as if the place wants to both be impressive and to fade non-threateningly into the background of its residents’ expensive vacations. Mike takes a seat between Jay and Jay’s stepfather Arnold, who is probably the blandest person Mike has ever met and a reliably near-silent dinner companion. Jay is still chattering away with Josh after the drink orders are placed, and as soon as Mike’s beer arrives he gulps from it gladly. 

Jay barely takes a breath to stop talking with Josh until his father walks in with a woman half his age. As they approach Jay ignores whatever Josh continues talking about to sit back in his chair and study them. Mike sees Lizzie meet Jay’s eyes from across the table. She gives him a ‘yeah, yikes, I know’ kind of look before she stands to give their father a hug. 

“There’s my guy,” Jay’s father says when he comes over to stand behind Jay and jostle his shoulders. “Jay, get up for a second, c’mere. I want you to meet someone special in my life. Edith, this is my son, Jay Jr.”

“I don’t go by junior,” Jay says, standing to shake Edith’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“He looks just like you,” Edith says. She’s pretty but sort of sharp-looking, thin with short black hair. Basically the opposite of Jay’s chubby blond mother.

“You think we look alike?” Jay’s dad says, squinting at Jay like he doesn’t agree. He’s smirking, too, is almost always smirking. “I’ve always thought he looks more like Cath. Ey, look who it is!” he says when Mike stands awkwardly to say hello, too. “How the heck are ya, man?” he asks when he shakes Mike’s hand, his smirk transforming into a real smile in a way that Mike can’t deny is charming, like when Jay tries to stifle his laughter and then gives in and experiences a sincere emotion for a fleeting moment, that emotion being something akin to admiration of Mike, for having made him laugh.

“Doing good,” Mike says, wondering if Jay’s dad has heard through the grapevine that he and Jay are supposedly dating. “Nice to meet you,” Mike says when Edith offers her hand. 

“And who are you?” Edith asks, because Mike forgot to give her his name.

“This is my boyfriend,” Jay says, loud enough that it feels like all the conversation at the table behind them stops, everyone turning their attention to this interaction. Jay shifts so that his shoulder is touching Mike’s arm, and he’s red-faced but holding his father’s gaze like this boyfriend thing is ammunition against his judgment, not fodder for it. 

“Mike,” Mike adds when Edith looks at him in confusion, still seeking his name. 

“Whoaaaa, what?” Jay’s father says, his eyebrows going up as he looks from Jay to Mike and then back again. “Ha!” He claps his hands together and points at them, grinning. “I knew it. Didn’t I tell you, so, Cath?” he calls to Jay’s mother, who already looks irritated by her ex-husband’s presence. “I did,” Jay’s father says, turning back to Mike and Jay when she doesn’t answer. “I told her. Ha, that’s great. Congratulations, lovebirds. It’s about damn time.”

“Thanks,” Mike says when Jay says nothing, kind of looking like he just forgot where they are and what’s happening.

They return to their seats, and Jay is quiet after the food orders are placed, sipping from a glass of red wine that he ordered because he’s watching his figure and apparently it’s a low-cal alternative to beer. Josh is distracted by a loud conversation with Jay’s father about Wisconsin politics that Mike is trying his best to tune out, and Arnold is fully occupied by buttering a slice of bread from the complimentary basket, as uninterested in chitchat as Mike is. 

“You okay?” Mike asks Jay, taking this as his chance to slide his arm around the back of Jay’s chair and let it rest against Jay’s shoulders. He nudges Jay’s bicep with his thumb until Jay looks over at him.

“I’m fine,” Jay says, frowning like he’s insulted by the question. Naturally. “Why?”

“I dunno, you seem kinda morose.”

“I’m just tired. How many beers have you had? Don’t get drunk,” he says, whispering this last part.

Mike snorts and leans over to whisper in Jay’s ear, so as not to tip anyone off:

“Mhmm, yeah, good job, nice touch. Now it _really_ sounds we’re dating.” 

Jay looks sort of dazed when Mike pulls back, and he’s red-faced again. He can barely handle someone whispering in his ear while other people look on, the little dweeb. Mike glances across the table and sees Jay’s mother giving them a fond, dreamy look, while Lizzie looks on with something like distaste, her lip slightly raised. 

“Which ones are Rich’s parents?” Mike asks, scanning the faces at the table. 

“None of them,” Jay says. “His family isn’t coming and I’m told it’s a long story and don’t ask.”

“Aw.” Mike feels bad for the guy, though at the moment Rich looks like he’s dizzyingly happy, laughing with Lizzie about something, his elbows on the table while he gestures with his hands, telling some story. “They’re a cute couple,” Mike says, lifting his empty beer bottle to waggle it when the waiter meets his eyes. 

“Yeah, Lizzie is really happy,” Jay says. He was tense under Mike’s arm at first, and Mike can feel it when he relaxes a little, then entirely, slumping tiredly into Mike’s touch. “We used to both say we were never gonna get married,” Jay says, more quietly, leaning toward Mike. “I knew for her it wouldn’t last.”

“How about for you,” Mike asks, nudging Jay’s arm with his thumb again. 

“Oh, god.” Jay snorts and gives Mike a look, startling a little when he realizes how close their faces have gotten. “Um, I. No, I mean. You know me, so what do you think?”

“Sometimes I wonder if I really know you as well as I think I do,” Mike says, narrowing his eyes and trying to get mad about this mental image he now has of Jay sobbing onto his steering wheel on the side of the road somewhere in rural Wisconsin. He can’t manage to really feel any bitterness about it as he happily accepts a second beer from the waiter and hugs Jay a little closer under his arm, thinking about him secretly falling apart over their fight and never wanting Mike to have the barest hint that he had. Prideful little fucker. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jay asks, staring at Mike. Their faces are still close. 

“Oh, nothing, Jay, nothing.” Mike almost forgets Jay’s no-kissing rule, wanting to lean over and give him a wet peck on the cheek. He catches himself in time, and has to remove his arm from Jay’s shoulders when the food starts to arrive. 

After dinner, they’re both starting to drag, the day beginning to feel unnaturally long. Jay takes the middle seat on the ride back but doesn’t talk much, mostly yawning and grunting in response to Josh’s inane commentary on whatever. At one point Jay shifts his weight against Mike’s side in a way that makes Mike think he’s going to rest his head on Mike’s shoulder and close his eyes, for fake-dating purposes or just because he’s tired enough not to care, but then they’re pulling up to the house, so it doesn’t happen. 

While Jay gets ready for bed, Mike sits on the closed lid of the toilet and watches with some degree of fascination as Jay goes through all his fastidious little processes. His tooth cleaning routine alone takes ten minutes. Mike supposes he would be the same way if he’d paid ten grand out of pocket for his teeth.

“What do you think of your dad’s new lady?” Mike asks. 

“That him calling her special means he might date her for two more weeks instead of one.” 

“Ha, yeah. He’s a playboy, or whatever. Good ol’ Captain Jay. Your sister seems glad he’s here, though.”

“Yeah, they’re actually pretty close. She always got along with him better than I did, when we were kids.”

“What? I thought he was, like, your favorite.”

“What, my favorite parent? Maybe, because he bought us whatever we wanted and took me to R-rated movies when I was nine. But he and Lizzie, they have, like, this thing-- I don’t know, a different kind of bond.”

“Of course it’s different between a father and daughter versus a father and son. There’s just a different kind of tension. Doesn’t mean--” 

“Let me tell you a story about my dad,” Jay says, turning from the sink and setting his skin moisturizer down heavily on the counter. “When me and Lizzie were little, whenever we first got picked up by him on his weekends, he would take us to McDonalds. And Lizzie always _had_ to sit next to him on his side of the booth, but I didn’t care about that. I loved McDonalds. I loved those disgusting, barely-meat burgers, but I had to order them a special way, okay, like, no onions obviously, and no pickles, just cheese, mustard and ketchup.”

Mike braces himself for this story to get dark, because what in the living fuck is Jay talking about? Maybe he’s as drunk as Mike feels, head-swimmy in a pleasant way. 

“The pickles were the worst part, for me,” Jay says, still looking very serious about this story and wherever it’s headed. “They just-- They tasted like _bugs_ , like, that combination of sliminess and crunch? Horrible. It ruined the whole burger. So I always asked for mine without them. Well, this one time, when I was about eight years old and Lizzie was I guess seven or so, my dad was smiling weird when I unwrapped my McDonalds burger, so I asked what what was funny. He said it was nothing, and leaned over to whisper something in Lizzie’s ear. She giggled, and they wouldn’t tell me what was funny. My dad said, nothing, forget it, we’ll tell you later. Well, that made me feel like shit in and of itself, and I bit into my burger, like-- Angrily, this huge bite. And there they were, crunching like disgusting bugs in my mouth. Pickles. Felt like about five of those motherfuckers all piled on top of each other. And what my dad had whispered to my sister, which made her laugh and made them both crack up while I spit out the bite I’d taken-- What he’d said was, ‘I forgot to order Jay’s without pickles.’” 

Mike just stares for a moment, waiting for Jay to laugh at himself. When he doesn’t, Mike breaks, doing it for him: just a couple of astonished guffaws at first and then hysterical, punch-drunk laughter that feels like something he’s been holding in all day, his head thrown back and his fist over his mouth. 

“Fuck you!” Jay says, glowering and red-faced when Mike manages to pry his eyes open wide enough to look at him, still losing it over how apparently traumatic this incident was to Jay, jesus christ. “It’s not funny!” Jay says, giving Mike a soft kick in the shin that he probably wanted to deliver much more violently. “It’s representative, okay! Lizzie would always be on my side against our mom, but when it was him she was totally different and ready to sell me out. God, stop laughing! You’re such a fucking asshole.”

“Jay.” Mike wipes at his eyes, his chest still bouncing. “Oh, jesus, you-- The look on your face right now. No, I get it, I see what you’re saying, but, just. It’s like, you know. Lemme tell you a story about _my_ dad, Jay. He once threw a beer bottle at my head, the end.” 

Mike is still laughing after saying so, though it’s true and was actually traumatic. Jay’s expression softens a little, because he knows that story already. 

“I didn’t mean to-- God, forget it.” Jay turns back to the sink and rinses his hands, then wipes them on a towel. “Are you coming to bed?”

Mike snorts at the casual delivery of that question, as if they really are a couple. Jay meets his eyes in the mirror and gives him a look like: don’t. 

“Yes, dear, I’m coming to bed,” Mike says. “Just gotta take a leak first. So clear out! Fuck, I thought your beauty routine would never end.”

When he’s finished Mike washes his hands, something he doesn’t usually bother with after taking a piss in the comfort of his own home or in one as squeaky clean as this one. He does it because Jay is a big weirdo about germs and they’re about to be sharing a bed, lying together between pristine white sheets. Mike stares at himself in the mirror, disliking how ashen and tired he looks. 

Jay is in the bed when Mike enters the room, sitting up on the side nearest to the bathroom, his legs pushed under the blankets while he looks at some papers in his lap. When Mike walks over and gets in on the other side of the bed, Jay thrusts one of the papers toward him.

“What’s this,” Mike asks, taking it.

“Our shooting schedule for the week. I made it according to Lizzie’s agenda.”

“Golf?” Mike says, wincing. “Brunch? Sailboat trip? We have to shoot all this?”

“Not the entirety of every event, but yeah! She’ll want to remember all this stuff. I’ll do most of the work, okay, as long as you help me lug the equipment and then do the ceremony when I’m up there in the wedding party.” 

Mike groans and nods. He puts the paper on his bedside table and throws three excess pillows onto the floor before flopping down onto the thinnest one. He likes a pillow that barely exists, and this one is actually perfect. His eyelids feel heavy as soon as he’s lying down. 

“Sorry I laughed at your pickle story,” Mike says when Jay shuts off the light by his side of the bed, throwing the room into darkness. Mike laughs a little again, unable to help it, just for the words ‘pickle story.’ 

“I’m used to it,” Jay says with a sigh, settling onto his side under the blankets. 

“You laugh at me all the time, too, by the way.”

Jay just grunts, which doesn’t sound like agreement. Mike rolls toward him, eyes closed, and when he opens them he’s facing Jay from across the enormous bed, a good two feet of space between them. The room is spilled through with moonlight and they can hear the ocean even through the closed windows, waves crashing down below. 

“I think it’s going pretty good,” Jay says, whispering. “They all believe me.”

“Lizzie suspects something.”

“Mhmm, yeah, but I’ll tell her the truth eventually, and she’ll understand.”

“Eventually? Oh.” Mike hadn’t considered that Jay has plans to announce their fake break-up someday, too. Maybe at Christmas. 

“G’night,” Jay whispers, and he rolls over to show Mike his back. He’s wearing a t-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts. Mike has on a similar getup, though he usually sleeps nude or in boxers when it’s not below freezing outside, and sometimes even when it is.

Mike rolls away from Jay and watches the shadows of waving palm tree fronds slide across the windows for a while, trying to figure out why he’s preemptively sad about the end of their fake relationship. Probably because ending things with Jay is a sore spot, and always will be. 

He lets his eyes fall shut and tries not to think about Jay sobbing in a car on the side of the road. Even as angry as Mike still was back then, working himself up daily over the things Jay said to him, he would have run back to Wisconsin in a fucking panic if he’d known that was happening, would have gotten down on his knees right there on the side of the road to say something like, me too, oh dear god, me too.


	3. Chapter 3

On the morning of their first full day on the island, Jay gets Mike up earlier than necessary and prods him to get to work as his pack mule, loading him down with camera equipment and shoving him into the rental car again, this time just the two of them in the backseat with all the stuff while Jay’s mom drives and Arnold maintains his usual content silence in the passenger seat. There are two items on Jay’s shooting schedule for the day: brunch, and the sailboat trip at sunset. Mike is enthused about neither, though he is hungry. 

“You boys sleep okay last night?” Jay’s mother asks on the drive toward brunch.

“Yep,” Jay says, quickly, as if he’s afraid Mike will make some comment containing innuendo in front of his freaking mother. Which: fair, maybe. “Thanks for giving us the master.”

“Oh, shoot, no problem. We’re happy downstairs. So, ah. You two are living together now, or what?”

“No, no,” Jay says. “We both still have our own place.”

“Ah-huh. And what’s the plan there?”

Jay gives Mike a desperate look, as if Mike knows the plan for their fake relationship. 

“Oh, I want to move in with Jay,” Mike says, aware that this is worse than innuendo when said to Jay’s mother. “He just doesn’t trust me not to trash his place.”

“Jay!” his mother says, and she looks sincerely concerned when she glances at them in the rearview. “You’re so fussy! Gosh, you always were.”

“It’s not-- Mike is putting it too simply.” 

As soon as his mom looks away, Jay gives Mike the dirtiest look he can manage.

Mike gives him an answering evil smirk.

“No, no, I know exactly what Mike means,” Jay’s mother says. “You gotta calm down about that, babe.”

“Calm down about what? You haven’t seen how Mike lives. Jesus, you’d be horrified.”

“Excuse me,” Mike says, earnestly annoyed by this. “No.”

“Yes, actually.” 

“I’m sure he’s exaggerating, honey,” Jay’s mother says, but when she glances at Mike she doesn’t actually look so sure. 

“It affects the shop, too,” Jay says. “I once found a petrified bag of like ten-year-old peanut M&M’s in our filing.” 

“How do we know you didn’t file those, Jay?” Mike asks, though he’s actually sure it was him. “Huh? You used to eat candy, not too long ago.” 

“Well, it’s none of my business,” Jay’s mother says, and Mike sees Jay roll his eyes, knowing what’s coming, “But to me it seems like an awful waste of money, keeping two apartments when you’re paying to rent the space for your shop, too. Milwaukee isn’t as affordable as it used to be! And you two could balance each other out, yah? One of you more on the tidy side and other more on the, ah, less worried about all that side?”

“I don’t need to be balanced out,” Jay says, sharply enough that Mike laughs a little. 

“Mhmm,” Jay’s mother says, as if she agrees with Mike that, yes, he fucking does.

They reach the brunch venue and Jay gives Mike instructions about what equipment to hand him and then what shots to get. Mike considers this is a dumb event to even shoot, but he thinks of it as practice. He’s a little rusty behind a camera. 

Most of the wedding party is there, but Jay’s father and Edith are nowhere to be found, Mike notices. He shovels a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream into his face after Jay has declared enough brunch footage captured, then sits back with a mimosa and tunes out the conversation, content to slide his arm around Jay’s shoulders and make him squirm a little while taking in the scenery. The brunch restaurant is on the beach, and it’s a beautiful day, hot and clear-skied. 

“So, are we going to hear the story now?” Lizzie asks when the conversation lags. She’s looking at Jay and Mike, looking mischievous. 

“What story,” Jay asks tightly, giving her a look like: please don’t.

“The story of how you two finally got together!” She grins like she both knows something is up and is testing Jay by asking him this in front of everyone. “What, uh. Broke the dam?”

“Ew,” Jay says, frowning. “Don’t-- Nothing, just--”

“It was approximately five months ago,” Mike says, and he throws back the rest of his third mimosa, so ready for this. Everyone turns to look at him, including Jay, whose warning stare is burning against Mike’s cheek. “On Halloween night.” 

“Oh my god,” Rich says, cackling. “Sorry, that just sounded funny.”

Good, Mike thinks, smiling at him. He approves of this guy thoroughly now. 

“It makes sense,” Lizzie says, giving Jay a questioning look like: wait, is this for real? “Jay is obsessed with Halloween.” 

“Oh, gosh,” Jay’s mother says. “Sure is. You should have seen him as a kid,” she says, speaking to Rich. “He couldn’t get enough of that stuff.” 

“He still can’t,” Mike says. He turns to wink at Jay.

Jay’s expression says: I hate you right now and I can’t do anything but smile tightly, gonna kill you later though!

Mike smiles back, genuinely. 

“We were at the shop,” Mike continues, looking back to Jay’s waiting family members and Rich. “Working late, ‘cause we’re always busy on Halloween.”

“People like to watch their old taped-off-TV classics on Halloween,” Jay explains. This is actually true. “And they suddenly remember their VCR doesn’t work anymore.”

“Exactly,” Mike says, not letting him change the subject. “So we were there until almost midnight, believe or not, and then we closed up shop. We were both pretty worn down, since it had been a busy day, and Jay wanted to watch a horror movie before we left.”

“They don’t need all the details,” Jay says.

“Yes, we do!” Lizzie says, her smile becoming something more real. “I mean, within reason.”

“You’re embarrassing your brother,” Jay’s mother says, though she’s obviously enjoying this, too, about three mimosas deep herself.

“Trust me, darling,” Mike says, jostling Jay a little under his arm and bringing their faces closer together in the process. Jay’s eyes are bright with fury, but he’s schooled his face into the most neutral expression he can manage. “It’s a charming story, and they want to hear it.”

“Charming,” Jay repeats flatly, his unblinking stare somewhere between begging Mike to spare him and promising that he will regret it if he doesn’t.

“Right,” Mike says, turning back to their audience. “So it’s Halloween night, we’ve been working all day, we’re tired, and Jay has barely been able to celebrate on his favorite holiday. Not that he doesn’t celebrate _all_ month long though, am I right?”

“Oh, you’re right,” Jay’s mother says, lifting her glass in recognition of this fact.

“So he wants to watch a scary movie right there at the shop. And I get the impression that it’s because it’s too late for him to go to any of the Halloween parties we were invited to, and that he doesn’t want to go back to his apartment alone. Like, he wants company. And I’m touched, honestly. And there’s no place I’d rather be than watching a movie with him, because, well. I mean, I was already in love with him.”

“Aww!” Lizzie says, looking pretty sold now. Mike privately congratulates himself. “Jay, were you, too?” she asks, her skeptical look returning. “I mean, you must have been, if something’s about to happen, in this story? On Halloween?”

“Uh,” Jay says. He’s red-faced. Everyone laughs.

Mike actually kinda feels bad for him then, and his instinctual response is to tighten his arm around Jay’s shoulders and hold him a little closer, which Jay probably doesn’t appreciate. Too late to go back now, though.

“Don’t make Jay talk about his feelings,” Mike says, not sure if he’s being savage or kind. “I’ll just say, you know, in summary, that this was the night of our first kiss. Exactly at midnight, too! The moment that Halloween ended, Jay’s saddest time of the year. I comforted him, shall we say.”

“Oh my god,” Jay says, putting his hands over his burning face.

“That’s wonderful!” his mother says, raising her glass again. “But say no more, poor Jay can’t take it.”

“Did you say anything to each other?” Lizzie asks, halfway between skeptical and accepting now. She looks to Mike as if his answer to this question will determine the entire story’s validity, in her view. “I mean, right beforehand? Like, did it just happen while the movie played, or were there words?”

“There were words,” Jay says, so sharply that Mike’s shoulders jump in surprise. “But you don’t get to hear them. That’s private, okay? Enough.”

“Aww, fine,” Lizzie says. “Want to know what Rich said to me right before our first kiss, though?”

“Oh god,” Rich says.

“Yes,” Mike says, though he normally can’t stand this shit. He’s curious.

“He said, ‘I fired that asshole,’ and he was talking about a manager at the company who called me Blondie and treated me like crap.”

“Eh, that guy had it coming anyway,” Rich says. He gives Lizzie a moony grin when she leans over to peck him on the lips.

Jay sighs as if this is the worst day of his life, but he’s also pressed himself to Mike’s side like he’s actually drawing some comfort from having him so close, though it’s also possible Mike is wishfully imagining this.

Mike feels weird, too, and it’s not just the day-drinking. It’s bothering him that he said he was in love with Jay all along, or at least before anything actually happened between them. There’s something not entirely inaccurate about that statement that feels too real now that he’s vocalized it.

After brunch, Rich and Lizzie head off to some bird sanctuary with Jay’s mother and Arnold, and Jay drives the rental back to the house, Mike in the passenger seat beside him and all their equipment loaded in back.

“So we have that sailboat thing later,” Jay says after driving in angry silence for five minutes or so.

“Yep,” Mike says. “You provided me with a copy of the shooting schedule, as you’ll recall.”

“That was some real bullshit, that crap you told them about Halloween,” Jay says, finally unleashing his anger rather than pretending he’s not experiencing it. Considering Mike’s history with Jay’s occasional rage, he’s not really sure which one he prefers, though he does hate it when Jay pretends not to feel things.

“Oh, give me a break,” Mike says. “They loved it. What’d you want me to do, pretend I didn’t want to talk about it? Like they’d believe that. They know me.”

“Fine, but we didn’t clear that story together ahead of time, and you didn’t know that I didn’t tell Lizzie or my mom some other version.”

“Please, like I don’t know you well enough to figure out that you would have just mumbled something vague and changed the subject. I mean, you hadn’t told them any details yet, right?”

Jay fumes in silence, which is as good as confirmation. 

Mike scoffs.

“You need to lighten up, man. I could tell from the context of the question that none of them had any details yet, duh. And my story was delightful. I think even Lizzie buys this now.” Mike gestures between them. “You should be thanking me, really.”

“Whatever, just-- Be careful. The last thing I need is for them to figure out this is a ruse and then try to psychoanalyze why I would ask you to do this for me.”

Mike withholds comment. If Jay wasn’t already pissed off he might have asked: well, why? But he knows he won’t get a real answer right now and tables the question for later.

Back at the house, they unload their equipment and discuss the logistics of filming on a sailboat. It’s actually a little bit exciting, a fun challenge in theory, and Mike has to admit that while the scenes filmed at brunch were uninspiring, they could get some good stuff during a sunset sail.

“I’m gonna go swimming,” Jay says when Mike has settled himself in front of the living room TV, flipping through channels and finding nothing remotely palatable. “Come with me,” Jay says, walking to give Mike’s leg a nudge with his foot.

“What, to the pool?”

“Yeah. It’s right there.” Jay points at the floor to ceiling windows that look out on the pool deck. “So you won’t have to journey far.”

“Ugh,” Mike says, but he has to admit that he’s kind of touched that Jay wants to swim with him, then worried about it when he remembers his story about being touched that Jay wanted to watch a scary movie with him at midnight on Halloween. 

In fact, that was what they actually did together last Halloween. Only the kissing part was made up.

“So,” Mike says when they’re in the pool together, Mike with his arms spread out along the infinity edge in the shallow end. He’s reclining there while Jay treads water nearby. “What are the words, by the way? Since you’re so keen on establishing the details of our little story.”

“Huh?”

“The words we said to each other before we kissed. You’re the one who made something of them. I was about to say I just looked over at your gleeful little face during a particularly grisly murder scene in the movie and couldn’t hold myself back from grabbing you and kissing you.”

“Oh, god. No, we don’t have to make up actual words that were said. I told them they don’t get to know what we said to each other. So there’s no point in making some up.”

“Mhmm, sure, but I feel like you and I should know, just in case.”

“In case what!”

“I don’t know, Jay, there’s a lot of drinking going on this week--”

“Okay, no. You are not getting drunk and telling more of that story. Please, Mike.”

“Shh, Jay, of course I won’t, but-- Okay, just indulge me. I’m here, doing your bidding, trailing you around to all these occasions, carrying the camera bag--”

“I carried the tripod! And the light.”

“--So just humor me, yeah? What words did we say?”

“Ugh. I don’t know.”

“Okay, in that case, I’ll make some up--”

“No! I get to do this part.” 

Jay wrinkles his nose, is adorable.

Mike is fucked.

But he keeps a placid expression on his face while he waits for Jay to invent a phony love confession for them, his heart beating so hard that he feels like it’s going to disturb the surface of the water and tip Jay off.

“Go ahead, then,” Mike says. “If you think you can come up with something so great.”

“Shut up, I’m thinking!”

Jay slips underwater and just floats there, waving his arms to keep himself down toward the bottom of the pool, eyes closed and breath held. He’s down there for kind of a long time, to the point that Mike wonders if Jay would rather drown himself than even pretend that he’d ever made himself vulnerable enough to confess his love to anyone, especially Mike.

When he comes up he gulps for air and gives Mike a strangely unguarded look, wet fringe hanging in his face. He pushes his hair back and swims closer to Mike, just out of reach.

“If you laugh, I’ll kill you,” Jay says.

Mike grins. “Oh, perfect. That’s exactly what you would say before throwing yourself on me and kissing me.”

“Shut up. I’m serious.”

“Okay, noted! So? What did you say before you kissed me, Jay?”

“I said something about the movie, some obscure detail about a character actor, the kind of shit you make fun of me for knowing. You grabbed my arm and pulled me over toward you and said, ‘I love that you know that.’ And then you kissed me.”

Mike feels like the concrete bottom of the pool has disappeared from under his feet. He slips down off the wall he was gripping, sinking into the water before bobbing back up again. He’s extremely buoyant, couldn’t really sink unless he wanted to.

Jay is red-faced. He goes underwater again and swims away from Mike, doesn’t surface until he’s in the deep end.

“Yeah, I guess that’s pretty good!” Mike says, shouting this at him. “I guess I can, uh. See myself. Saying that. Sure.”

Jay goes under again and does a little flip beneath the water before coming back up for air. He doesn’t look back at Mike until he’s on the other side of the pool, floating under the diving board.

“And what’d you say after?” Mike shouts, wondering if Jay is being coy, and should Mike swim after him?

“Huh?” Jay shouts back.

“After I kissed you!” Mike doesn’t care that he’s loud. Nobody else is here, just them. The whole resort feels weirdly quiet and empty beyond the boundaries of their villa’s fenced-in yard.

Jay swims back toward him, underwater again. He’s almost reached the spot where Mike is standing when he pulls up for air, still pink-cheeked. Maybe he’s sunburned.

“My response was, ‘I know,’” Jay says, eyes bright. He’s amused with himself, or something. “Like Han Solo.”

“Oh, god, of course. Of course you’d give yourself the cool line.”

Jay smiles, and Mike feels himself beaming in response. He considers suggesting that they should practice kissing, just in case.

“Hello?” someone calls from the driveway, on the other side of the gate. “Anybody home?”

Jay’s father puts his face against the latticework gate and grins in at them.

“Ah, the lovebirds!” he says.

“Um, no,” Jay says. “Don’t call us that. It’s Lizzie’s wedding. This is her-- Lovebird. Thing.”

“This unlocked?” Jay’s father asks, and he tries the gate, Edith following him into the backyard when it opens.

Mike submerges himself as much as possible while still breathing, disliking the fact that they suddenly have company and that when he gets out of this pool he will presumably have an audience. He’s not all _that_ fat, it could be worse, but he’s not exactly designed for public consumption when half naked.

Edith walks across the patio, chin lifted as she evaluates the mother-of-the-bride’s villa. Jay’s father squats down to put his hand in the pool as if to test the water temperature, like he’s considering jumping in.

“Where’s Liz?” he asks.

“She and Rich went to some nature park with Mom and Arnold,” Jay says. “Are you coming on this sailboat thing tonight?”

“You know, I doubt that I should.” He glances at Edith, one eye closed against the glare of the sun. “But she wants to.”

“Hmm,” Jay says. “Well. We better go get ready for it.”

“It’s not till sunset, I thought?”

“Right, but we have to, like. Get our equipment ready. Mike?”

“Yep,” Mike says, already hoisting himself out for everyone’s viewing pleasure. They didn’t remember to bring towels out, which makes this extra embarrassing. There’s nothing to retreat into.

“What are we supposed to do while you two are-- Uh?” Jay’s father stands with his hands on his hips.

“Make yourself at home, I guess,” Jay mutters, beckoning for Mike to follow him into the house. Mike is all too glad to hurry after him, feeling like a water buffalo under the merciless sun.

“I don’t know if we should hang out,” Jay’s father says. “When’s your mom getting back?”

“God, relax!” Edith says. “They don’t care if we have a drink. Right?” she says to Jay, who is lingering in the patio doorway while Mike stands in the living room, not sure if he should bolt for the stairs or stay here and provide backup.

“Right,” Jay says. “I’m gonna-- We’re gonna-- I gotta take a shower, uh. We’ll be upstairs if you need us.”

He hurries up to their room after saying so. Mike follows him, not really sure what is happening but excited by it anyway, because this day suddenly feels full of good developments.

Jay doesn’t say anything when they’re alone together in the master bedroom. He goes straight into the bathroom, shuts the door behind him and takes a shower.

Mike feels lost, but is still waiting to see what will happen. He peels off his wet swimsuit and uses the comforter on the bed to dry off, Jay having sequestered all the towels behind the closed bathroom door. He puts on boxers and a t-shirt, not sure he cares enough to shower the chlorine smell off. The windows in their room look down over the pool deck, and Mike takes a peek at the activity below from between two slats of the blinds. He can’t see Edith, but Jay’s father is still out back, now looking longingly down into the hot tub.

“You okay?” Mike asks when Jay comes out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist.

“Me?” Jay says, pawing through his suitcase for clothes.

“Uh, yeah. You’re the only person in here.”

“I’m fine-- Why?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“I just don’t feel like hanging out with that woman,” Jay mutters, still digging through his suitcase.

“Sure,” Mike says. “That’s no fun.”

“I mean, I’m sure she’s fine. They’re all fine, whatever. When I was like eight he had this one called Kristen who I was kind of in love with.”

“I refuse to believe you were ever in love with a woman, Jay.”

“Shut up. I was. I liked her. She reminded me of my mom, if my mom was always nice to me.”

“Your mom _is_ always nice to you.”

“No, she’s not. Fuck, I don’t think I brought my _Jaws_ shirt.”

“Oh my god. The trip is ruined!”

“I was gonna wear it on the-- Never mind, it was a stupid joke, anyway. Are you gonna take a shower?”

“Nah.”

“Of course not. Well, get dressed. I feel like we should, ugh. Make an effort. With those two, downstairs.”

“Why?” Mike asks, hoping to collect some evidence toward his theory about why Jay wants to do this fake boyfriend thing at all.

“Because it’s polite?” Jay says. “They came over to spend time with us.”

“Me and you?”

“Probably Lizzie and Rich, actually. But still.”

Mike groans and walks over to find something to wear. Jay is just standing there half-naked with his jeans and underwear hugged to his chest, as if he can’t move forward without the _Jaws_ shirt.

“Does your dad like Rich?” Mike asks, stepping into his jeans while Jay watches, seemingly in a daze.

“What?” Jay says, snapping this like Mike asked a rude question.

“Rich! Your sister’s fiance! Does Jay Senior like him?”

“Don’t call him Jay Senior.”

“He’s my potential father-in-law now, Jay, I’ll call him whatever I want.”

Jay looks like he doesn’t know how to respond to this, then scowls.

“He thinks Rich is too old for her,” he says. “Which is really funny, considering Rich is only five years older than Lizzie and my dad still dates women in their thirties. Like, how old could Edith possibly be? Forty, at most?”

“Yeah, that’s bullshit. Rich doesn’t even seem old. Just bald.”

“And fat. My dad is weird about fat people.”

“Oh, great, tell me that now.”

“You’re not fat.”

“Um.” Mike glances at the mirror across the room just to make sure. “What?”

“I mean-- Okay, but you carry it well, you’re tall and you don’t hunch. It’s not the same.”

“I don’t hunch?”

“No, you don’t! I-- What is happening? Why are we even talking about this?” 

Jay groans and throws up his free hand. He grabs some other screen-print movie shirt and retreats into the bathroom to get dressed.

Mike stands out in the bedroom feeling pleased with himself. He looks in the mirror again, sucking in his gut and putting his shoulders back. Does he actually have good posture? Probably not, but maybe Jay thinks so.

Five minutes later Jay emerges with his hair styled perfectly. The shirt he’s wearing has a Gremlin on it. He dodges Mike’s burning stare, but once they’re downstairs with beers in their hands, sitting on the loveseat across from the sofa where Edith and Jay’s dad have settled with their drinks, Jay slips under Mike’s arm like he’s glad for the shelter it provides. He even rests his elbow on Mike’s gut. 

“So what broke the dam?” Jay’s father asks after they’ve chitchatted about bullshit for a bit.

“Eugh,” Jay says. “Why are you and Lizzie both calling it that?”

“What’s the dam?” Edith asks.

“These two,” Jay’s father says, lifting his beer to gesture at Mike and Jay with it. “They’ve known each other since, what? High school?”

“Not that long,” Mike says. 

“We met at work!” Jay says. “You know this.”

“Yeah, but you were barely out of high school when you got that job. Anyway, they’ve been friends a real long time, and now, bam! This happens. So? What was it?”

“We just had this conversation with Mom this morning,” Jay says, a little tightly, like: and you missed it, so. 

“It was Halloween night,” Mike begins, and Jay elbows him, right in the gut. 

“Nothing specific,” Jay says, face coloring. “We just. We didn’t want to mess up our friendship. Or the business. So we waited until we were sure. And then, we were.”

“Huh.” Jay’s dad looks back and forth between the two of them. His scrutiny reminds Mike of Lizzie’s. 

“What made you sure,” Edith asks, tilting her gin and tonic in her hand. 

Mike and Jay look at each other, and it’s probably incriminating. Mike tightens his arm around Jay, not sure if he’s doing it to signal that Jay should answer or because Jay looks kind of panicked and Mike wants to reassure him. 

“Uhh,” Mike says. “Well. Maybe it was because Jay, uh. Some guy was flirting with him, at this bar we went to. The bartender, or something. Or that’s how it seemed, to me. And I thought, hey, no. You can’t have him, guy. He’s mine. And then things just snowballed from there.” 

“Yep,” Jay says, fidgeting. 

They both turn to stare at Jay’s father and Edith, and Mike wonders if Jay is also thinking about what happened last time one of them got flirted with and the other objected strongly. That was the start of their big fight that lead to the five month separation, sort of. There had been other issues surrounding them like oily rags, but the flirting thing was the spark that set the whole thing ablaze. 

“That’s really romantic,” Edith says, and she seems to be sincere, unsmiling and serious. “Were you both in love with each other the whole time?” 

“Ha, well,” Jay says, stiffening under Mike’s arm. “It wasn’t-- It’s--” 

“How’d you two meet?” Mike asks, rescuing him.

“She’s a stewardess,” Jay’s father says, as if that explains it, and Mike supposes it does.

An hour later, Jay’s mother and Arnold arrive. Rich and Lizzie are over at the bridesmaid headquarters where Lizzie is staying, and it’s a little awkward without them there to be the joyful glue that holds everyone together. Jay’s father and Edith leave after finishing their drinks, saying they’ll see everyone at the marina later. 

“Where’d your father find her?” Jay’s mother asks when they’re gone.

“On a plane,” Jay says. “She was serving him drinks.”

“Oh, sure, well. There you go. Good for him.”

By then Mike has had two beers, and these plus the earlier mimosas and sun exposure make a nap inevitable. He goes upstairs and crawls into the bed still fully dressed, is out in an instant. He doesn’t expect Jay to join him, but when he wakes up an hour later Jay is there on his side of the bed, curled up on top of the blankets in his Gremlins shirt and boxer shorts, hugging a pillow, fast asleep. 

“Hey,” Mike whispers, scooting over toward him. When he’s in poking range he gives Jay’s shoulder a nudge, then again when the first one doesn’t wake him. 

Jay sucks in his breath and sits up a little, startled. He sees Mike and deflates again, burying his face against the pillow. The way he flexes his back and moans into the pillow makes Mike’s dick twitch hopefully, which is a problem. 

“We should get ready,” Mike says. “It’s after four.” The sunset sail thing leaves the marina at five.

“Shit,” Jay says, voice muffled. “Did my mom come knocking?”

“Nah, I just woke up. You okay?”

“Yes!” Jay snorts and rolls onto his side, facing Mike. “Why do you keep asking that?” 

There’s something almost sweet in his eyes, like he appreciates this more than he’s annoyed by it. Mike shrugs.

“Just making sure you’re up for, uh. Sea-faring.”

“I won’t have to sail the ship myself, so I’ll probably be fine. Oh god.” Jay rolls onto his back and puts his hands over his face, arching up off the mattress in a way that’s hot enough to make Mike think: okay, wait. Is he doing that on purpose? “My dad’s gonna be so obnoxious,” Jay says, spreading his fingers so he can peek out at Mike. “With the sailboat people. He’s going to try to take over or something, to impress everybody.” 

“No, no,” Mike says, resisting the urge to reach over and rub the flat of Jay’s stomach consolingly, also trying not to stare at the strip of exposed skin between his rucked-up t-shirt and the hem of his boxers. “Well,” he says when he’s managed to drag his gaze up to meet Jay’s. “Maybe yes, but. It’s not your problem.”

“I don’t want him to annoy Lizzie. Or Rich. He’ll make everything about himself, just wait.”

As soon as they’re at the marina they’re too preoccupied with the logistics of recording aboard the sailboat to worry about what anyone is doing beyond whether or not they can get it on film. Jay Sr. does try to talk shop with the captain and crew on the boat, but so far as Mike can tell it’s just friendly banter. Lizzie and Rich seem unbothered, anyway, and Mike is pretty proud of some of the footage he got by the time the sun has gone down and the crew is serving everyone jerk chicken sliders for dinner.

Mike gets the okay from Jay to stop filming after dark, and they sit together above deck with their sliders, accepting beers from the crewmate who appears to be in charge of getting everyone drunk. Mike actually doesn’t feel like being drunk, which is rare. 

He feels, what-- Happy? Something like that, when Jay laughs at a dumb comment he made, featuring a boat-themed pun, everyone else pretending not to have heard it. The seating on deck is limited and Jay is practically in Mike’s lap. His face is close enough to kiss, if Mike was allowed to do that. Jay smells fucking incredible, like salt spray and sweat, also a variety of sun-melted grooming products. 

Normally noticing this would stress Mike out, but here it feels fine, because they’re pretending they’re together in a way that would make it perfectly okay for Mike to think about peeling Jay’s clothes off later because he smells good now. Mike is holding Jay against his side and has full permission to give him dopey grins like somebody who’s in love with him would. It’s great, a relief, and if Mike is also terrified, he’s not going to think about that yet.

“Don’t post that anywhere” Jay says when he notices Lizzie taking pics of them with her cell. It’s possible Mike is visibly sniffing Jay in one of them, so he silently seconds this request.

“I won’t,” she says. “But why not? Aren’t you two official?”

“Yeah, in real life,” Jay says. “We don’t do social media. So don’t do it for us.” 

“Hey, relax,” Mike says, squeezing his shoulder. “She said she’s not posting it.”

“Jay has always been like this,” Lizzie says, waving her hand through the air. She seems a little drunk, smiling widely and reclining against Rich. “He thinks-- What do you think, Jay? That people are going to laugh at you if it seems like you have a human heart?”

“I have no such thing,” Jay says, and he leans onto Mike like he wants to hide from the truth. They’re pressed together so tightly that Mike can feel Jay’s nervous little heart hammering away, secret and safe against Mike’s side.

By the time they’re back at the marina Mike has changed his mind about wanting to be drunk. He finished three beers on the sailboat, and now he’s wondering if he should just tell Jay tonight that he’s probably in love with him for real, whoops.

“Let’s walk home,” Mike suggests. “It’s not that far. We can walk on the beach.” 

“Do you know your way?” Jay’s mother asks, looking wary when Jay hesitates. 

“Sure, sure,” Mike says. “It’s a small island. We’ll figure it out.” 

“I guess,” Jay says. He shrugs and helps Mike load the camera equipment into the backseat of the rental car. “We won’t be out too late,” he says to his mom. 

“Just be careful,” she says. “You boys have both had a few.”

“We can manage walking, Mom. We’ll be fine.”

As soon as everyone else has headed off, they go a liquor store near the marina and buy a bottle of rum, snickering like kids who are using a fake ID to get it. Mike is giddy when they carry it down to the beach in a brown bag and find a place to sit and watch the ocean, their backs to a towering palm tree. Its massive fronds sway in the wind overhead while they exchange swigs from the rum bottle.

“We’re gonna regret this in the morning,” Jay says, and he settles his shoulder against Mike’s in a way that feels deliberate, maybe planned. He’s warm against Mike’s side and finally in a good mood, laughing at near everything Mike says. 

“This?” Mike says, lifting the rum bottle. “Or something else?”

“The rum.” Jay turns to frown at him, looking more confused than annoyed. “What else would we, uh-- The walk back?”

“Nah, it’s not far. Never mind.” Mike drinks from the bottle and passes it over.

“We’re not going to drink the whole thing,” Jay says, though it’s somehow already half gone. It’s not a big bottle, small enough to fit in Jay’s tiny hand. 

“Right,” Mike says. 

He presses his shoulder against Jay’s more firmly. Jay doesn’t pull away. Mike shifts his elbow onto Jay’s hip first, then slides his arm over as casually as he can, settling his hand on Jay’s knee. 

“In case someone in the wedding party walks by,” Mike says, doing a theatrical whisper when Jay gives him a puzzled look. “You know, we should be, uh. Cuddling.” 

“Cuddling,” Jay repeats. He looks dazed, drinks more. “Right. Okay.” 

“What’s gonna happen when you do fall in love with some bartender?” Mike asks. 

“Bartender? Huh?”

“You know, like that story I told. What’s gonna happen when a guy flirts with you and I don’t like it? Am I just gonna stand there and watch some dude take you away from me?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m asking you what you’d want me to do. Nothing, right?” He elbows Jay, who looks confused, or sad, scared? “Right?”

Jay shakes his head. For a moment Mike is sure they’re going to kiss. Mike is already taking the deep breath that he wants to exhale into Jay’s mouth. 

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Jay says.

“Why not?” Mike’s hand tightens over Jay’s knee. Is it happening? Is he doing this? He takes the bottle back from Jay and drinks more rum, preparing himself. “Huh?” he says, shaking Jay’s leg a little. “How come I don’t need to worry about that, Jay?”

“I’m done with all that shit,” Jay says, as if he ever began with it in the first place.

“That shit?” Mike says. “What, like. Love?”

Jay shrugs one shoulder and takes the bottle back. Mike watches his throat bob when he drinks from it.

“It’s not important,” Jay says, still a little breathless from gulping down booze, his gaze unfocused and directed out at the dark horizon.

“If love isn’t important, Jay, what the fuck is?”

Mike can hear how drunk he sounds, and it makes him feel suddenly wasted, a spinny sense of disorientation slamming into him like a freight train, but he doesn’t give a shit. Jay snorts but doesn’t manage to look amused or even like he’s making fun of Mike when he glances over at him.

“This,” Jay says, voice a little thick. “You, us. It’s. What I have and it’s enough, I think. For me.”

Mike looks out at the ocean. He takes the bottle back but doesn’t drink from it or swallow what he wants to say next.

“Yeah. Okay. Uh-huh.” Mike turns back to Jay, needs to be looking at him when he says this. “That’s because I fucking love you. And you know it. That’s why it’s enough, for you.”

Jay’s eyes get wide.

“I-- I know,” he says when Mike just stares at him, not backing down. “I know, yeah, just, as-- We’re best friends.” 

“Unh-uh, don’t give me that shit. Don’t tell me how I love you. I’m the one telling you, okay? Not that it’s even news to you, not really.” 

“What the hell are you talking about?” 

Jay must hear how unconvincing he sounds, because he actually looks guilty after saying that, or maybe just afraid of how deep Mike wants to dive into this, all the way to the bottom.

“You know what the fuck I’m talking about,” Mike says. He feels himself getting mean, mad, like he’s back standing in that kitchen in 2003 and this is the Jay who wanted a fight. “This is _dysfunctional_ , Jay. You’re asking me to-- To pretend? This whole thing, who does this? Why? But I guess you like how fucked up we are for each other, since you made us this way. That’s why it’s enough for you to spend the rest of your life cockteasing my heart, as long as you get to be in control and never give me anything back. Guess what, bitch? It’s not enough for me. Not even halfway.”

Mike is aware he’s gone way too far, but he feels like it was worth it to finally say all that, no matter what happens next, ‘cause something’s definitely going to happen next. 

He is surprised, therefore, and hurt, when Jay just laughs and shrugs.

“Sure, Mike,” he mutters, turning away to look at the dark ocean again. “Whatever you say. You won’t even remember this in the morning, by the way.”

“Bullshit I won’t.”

“Oh no?” Jay’s eyes are angry in a flash when he looks at Mike again. Mike greatly prefers this to his fake cavalier bullshit but is still a little scared of what he’s about to say. “Guess what, _bitch_?” Jay says, mocking him. “You’ve said this kind of shit to me before. Like, multiple times. And I made the mistake of saying some back, once. And then, hey. Nothing comes of it. So why don’t you keep making out with your true love there in that bottle and leave me the fuck alone.”

Jay gets up and stumbles away, obviously drunk. Mike wants to follow him but can’t move, a sinking kind of horror pulling down through him and anchoring his ass to the sand. 

At first he’s like: I’m the problem, I’m a fucking disaster. 

Then he thinks, no, wait. It’s Jay who is wrong! At least partly wrong. Mike wouldn’t have forgotten confessing even this much to Jay, and he sure as shit would have remembered if Jay said something back. He has the unfortunate ability to remember what goes on when he’s drunk down to every humiliating detail, except in the most extreme cases. This may be a case of Jay having once mumbled something very subtle and Mike not picking up on it because he wasn’t at his sharpest at the time. Because that’s how Jay would confess, if he ever confessed anything: in a muttered riddle, when he knew Mike wasn’t paying attention. 

And Jay decided-- What, therefore? That one drunken insinuation that Mike didn’t catch would be his single and final attempt to have love in his life?

That if he can’t have Mike he just won’t have anyone?

Mike needs to find out. He scrambles up from the sand and leaves the rest of the bottle of rum at the base of the tree, fighting a wave of nausea that threatens when his stomach shifts as he stands. Never mind-- He can do this. He has to, feels like it’s his last chance. The wind whips through the palm trees overhead and pushes against Mike at first, then changes and is at his back, or maybe it’s him who changed course. Anyway, he lets it drive him forward.


	4. Chapter 4

Jay was headed inland when he stormed off the beach. Mike walks in that direction and searches in random directions, a stiff wind making his shirt billow around him as he moves through the mostly empty, dark streets of the resort. He thinks of calling Jay’s name, then considers how bad it would be if one of Jay’s family members heard him doing so and realized they’re having a lover’s quarrel, or whatever this is. 

It’s actually something much worse, Mike decides, taking a seat at a bus stop to catch his breath. He feels seasick in some belated way, the rocking of the sailboat only reaching him now. He considers texting Jay to ascertain his whereabouts, but knows he wouldn’t get a response. He hefts himself back onto his feet with a groan and resumes the search, determined to make this right tonight.

After another hour or so of miserable, increasingly sober wandering, he comes to a circular driveway with a massive fountain at the center and narrows his eyes at the building ahead. It’s the resort’s main hotel, sprawling toward the golf course and six stories tall, the lobby softly lit from within. 

Mike isn’t sure how he knows Jay is in there. He just does, and feels like an approaching zombie as he ambles toward the hotel’s sliding front doors, his feet aching. He’s ready to collapse, exhausted and disoriented, and when he walks through the hotel’s main lobby, with its tinkly spa music and tasteful water features, he sees Jay has beaten him to it: he’s passed out at a table in the closed-down lobby bar area, one empty glass on his table and another lying on its side near his feet. 

“Jay,” Mike says, approaching. 

No response.

Mike hurries over to make sure he’s okay. Jay is breathing evenly, fast asleep. He only grunts when Mike tries to get him wake up, then to stand. 

“Oh, good,” someone says, and Mike looks up to see a hotel worker watching him struggle to get Jay on his feet. She’s a youngish woman who looks like she might work in reception. “I was about to call security.”

“It’s all under control,” Mike says, putting both arms around Jay so he can hoist him onto his feet.

“Fuck you,” Jay says, but he’s laughing, eyes closed and head lolling. “Control, under you, you wish--”

“Shut up,” Mike says, as kindly as he can manage with the frowning reception worker looking on.

“You two are staying at the hotel?” she says.

“Even better,” Mike says, disliking her unconcealed incredulity. “We have a whole fucking villa. Now, if you’ll excuse us. We’ll be off.”

“Let me have security take you,” she says, and she holds up her hands when she sees the answering look on Mike’s face. “Just for your convenience,” she says. “It’s our pleasure.”

Security turns out to be a dumpy old guy who shows up in a golf cart. Mike sits in back with Jay, feeling like they barely fit. Jay is too out of it to care that Mike is cradling him in his arms. He just slumps there drunkenly, moaning under his breath and twisting his hand into the front of Mike’s shirt like he’s afraid Mike will get away. Like Mike is the one who ran. Admittedly, Mike is the one who angrily torpedo’d the conversation before Jay could, which is perhaps worse. 

“You boys here for anything special?” the security guard asks after all three of them have been silent for most of the drive to the villa. 

“A wedding,” Mike says. 

“Yours?”

“Not quite,” Mike says, though he’s begun to feel like at the end of this thing he and Jay are either going to get married or never speak to each other again. 

Jay is asleep again before they get there, and rousing him is easier this time, but his mood is worse once he’s reawakened, and he scowls as Mike helps him out of the cart, then to the front door. Mike prays they won’t walk in to some family scene in the living room, everybody playing board games or something. He exhales with relief when he finds the front door unlocked and the living room and kitchen both empty. He gets Jay up the stairs as quickly as he can, which isn’t very, but just arriving in their room and shutting the door behind them feels like a huge victory, and Mike is a little short of breath, back aching.

“Let’s get you in bed,” Mike says, stumbling toward it with his arm around Jay’s waist. 

“Have to take a piss,” Jay says, eyes closed. He waves his free arm out into the darkness, toward the bed, as if he plans to feel his way toward the toilet.

“This way,” Mike says, turning him in the direction of the bathroom.

Mike helps Jay walk toward the toilet, and as soon as they’re standing in front of it he knows there’s no hope of Jay staying upright on his own. He’s half-asleep in Mike’s grip, flopping around bonelessly, and his legs keep buckling. 

“What the hell did you drink at that bar?” Mike asks when he’s positioned Jay in front of the toilet and kicked the lid up for him, hoping he can manage the rest. 

“I dunno,” Jay mumbles. “Who cares.” 

Jay slumps back against Mike’s chest and undoes the front of his jeans. Mike keeps his eyes averted and focuses on holding Jay upright, suddenly feeling lightheaded and wobbly-legged himself. They didn’t put any lights on in the bathroom, which helps this seem less weird, although, who is he kidding, everything about this is maximum weird, because he’s holding Jay up while Jay takes a leak. 

“Nn, you’re right, though,” Jay says, eyes closed as his head tips heavily forward, then back. “About me, Mike, you are _right_. ‘Cause, yeah. This, this is the kinda shuh, shit I’m into, mhmm, yep. Not like your-- Whatever you want, hand-holding and sex in a bed, under blankets. This is the good shit right here, the fucked up shit.” 

“Piss?” Mike says, confused, and Jay laughs. 

“No, I hate piss. I hate all bodily fluids. Ew. I mean you, you being here while I do this. Kinda surprised you didn’t try to hold my dick for me, honestly.” 

Mike makes an indignant noise, as if he didn’t consider it. 

“It’s fucked up, that’s right, you’re right,” Jay says, his head dropping back onto Mike’s shoulder after he’s tucked himself back into his boxers, pants still hanging open. “Mhmm, and I’m fucking into it, yeah. You’re right about that, too. Fucking asshole. Anyway, goodnight.” 

Jay turns and falls into Mike’s arms like Mike is his bed, passing out fully. 

Mike catches him before he can crumple. He lifts Jay fully off the floor, hoisting him up against his gut with a pained grunt, hands squeezed under Jay’s thighs while Jay’s legs hang limp around his sides. Jay moans a little and presses his face to Mike’s neck, drooling there in a way that probably shouldn’t be arousing. Mike carries him back into the bedroom, moving in shuffling steps, way too tired for this but also sort of loving it, distantly. 

Because there could never be a time when Jay was in trouble and Mike wouldn’t want to rescue him. Even if the trouble was something Jay did to Mike, like that one time. Mike still would have pulled Jay out of whatever he was drowning in if he could have, and maybe he did, back then, just by being the one who came back, who said he was sorry, and then rewrote his whole life around Jay’s, because why not. 

“Here you go,” Mike says when he deposits Jay onto his side of the bed. “Don’t sleep on your back, okay? Do you feel like you’re gonna barf?”

Jay just moans in answer. He paws at Mike when he tries to pull away, grabbing Mike’s shirt and tugging him forward with surprising drunken strength. Mike’s knee lands on the mattress and he almost topples over onto Jay, still drunk himself. 

“Don’t leave me alone,” Jay says, eyes closed. He sounds like he’ll cry. “You always, always leave me all by myself.”

“Only ‘cause you ask me to!” 

Mike considers whether or not this is true. It is, right? Jay has hurt him so many times by pushing him away, holding him at arm’s length, laughing at his sentimental bullshit.

Jay rolls onto his side, tugs a pillow into his arms and falls asleep. 

Mike groans and does a lap around the dark room, palms pressed over his eyes. He feels dizzy when he removes his hands from his face, and realizes he can’t be upright anymore, that it’s sleep or die time. He kicks off his shoes and steps out of his jeans on the way to the bed, leaving them crumpled on the floor and throwing his socks in their direction. He takes Jay’s shoes off for him, carefully unlacing them one at a time. He considers helping Jay out of his jeans, too, then thinks: why? 

He collapses into bed beside Jay, maybe closer than he needs to, somewhere near the middle, so he can hear it if Jay starts choking on his vomit or something during the night. 

Jay is still out cold when Mike falls asleep, and Mike isn’t sure how much time has passed when he wakes up to the feeling of Jay squirming against him while making sad little noises, tugging at Mike’s shirt and scooting in close, his knees tucking up under Mike’s gut.

“Mike,” Jay says, eyes closed, maybe talking in his sleep.

“What.” Mike is afraid to touch him, doesn’t move.

“I don’t feel good.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Need me to call poison control or what?”

Jay moans and then falls asleep again. Within a minute he’s drooling onto Mike’s t-shirt. 

Mike’s opportunity for sleep is lost, meanwhile. He’s awake with an increasingly bad headache, eyes and mouth bone dry, unable to get up and drink some water because he’s too busy tracking Jay’s every breath and little sigh against his chest. The drooling stops after a while, when Jay buries his face fully between Mike’s doughy man tits, nuzzling at Mike as if he’s in heaven, or at least comforted. He makes soft noises under his breath, and if Mike wasn’t already suffering the hangover that’s probably going to kill him it would be enough to get him hard, all those little _mmph_ s and _nnh_ s and the way Jay twitches against him at moments, too, as if startling away from something in a dream. 

When the birds outside are waking up for the coming dawn, Jay rolls over and presses himself back against Mike’s chest. Only then does Mike register that Jay took his jeans off before crawling across the bed to cuddle him. Mike sighs and lets his weight spill onto Jay, his arm snaking across Jay’s chest. His grip on Jay stays loose, in part because he’s falling asleep again himself, headache and all, finally too exhausted to do anything else.

When Mike wakes up, Jay is back on the other side of the bed, curled up and turned away from him. He’s breathing hard, obviously awake.

“You okay?” Mike asks, wincing when even the sound of his own voice makes his head pound harder.

“No,” Jay says, his voice pained and tiny.

Mike scoots closer, slowly, because moving hurts and because he doesn’t want to spook Jay, who already seems freaked. He puts his hand on Jay’s shoulder, gentle. Jay flinches against his touch and curls his shoulders in tighter, which hurts worse than anything else so far in this morning of blinding pain. 

Mike takes his hand away and returns to his side of the bed, flopping miserably onto his back and staring at the ceiling.

Jay rolls onto his back, too, making a little noise under his breath like it hurts to do so, which manages to cut through Mike’s agony and arose him slightly, adding a new dimension to this torture. Jay is wincing when Mike dares a look over at him, eyes shut and hands tented over his mouth.

“So,” Mike says, deciding to just go ahead and take a nail bat to the ballooning tension. “Maybe we should both drink less.” 

In response to this suggestion, Jay flings himself out of the bed and runs into the bathroom to throw up. 

“Yep,” Mike says to himself, wincing as he listens to Jay get sick. “Less would be good.”

The toilet flushes and the sink runs for a while. Jay comes into the bathroom doorway looking like death, clearly miserable. Mike meets his gaze and holds out his arms. 

“Can’t,” Jay says, which means what? That he wants to flop back onto the bed and crawl into Mike’s outstretched arms? “We have to be at that golf thing in fifteen minutes.”

“Oh holy fuck, no way.”

“Yes, way. Mike, this is a promise I made to my sister on the day before her wedding.”

“Jesus, Jay, this isn’t _The Godfather_. It’s not that serious. You look like you can barely stand up!”

“That’s accurate but it doesn’t matter. Get dressed, get your shit. Let’s go.”

Mike groans, feeling like he can’t even sit up, let alone be in the presence of Jay’s family and pretend everything’s fine in multiple ways that it actually isn’t. He watches miserably as Jay gathers clothes from his suitcase and returns to the bathroom to change. When Jay emerges he gives Mike a dirty look that motivates him to get up and get moving. 

Even carrying the camera equipment downstairs feels like a near-impossible feat, and it’s a blisteringly hot morning already, not a single cloud in the merciless sky as they load the car. Jay’s mother and Arnold aren’t participating in this golf outing, so on top of everything else they have to drive themselves. 

“Not it,” Mike says when Jay looks at him from over the roof of the car, all their stuff packed into the backseat. 

“I’ll throw up again if I have to drive,” Jay says. 

“Hmm,” Mike says, returning to the mental image Jay’s mother gave him, of Jay pulled over on the side of the road and sobbing onto his steering wheel because he missed Mike so much. Or something.

Mike ends up driving, because of course he does. He wants to spare Jay as much pain as possible, though he’s also still mad at Jay for making that accusation last night, about Mike saying and hearing things while drunk and not remembering. He’s going to come back to that as soon as he can, but first they have to survive pleasantries with the golf gang and shoot some video, because apparently Lizzie is someday going to want to watch footage of herself playing golf on the day before her wedding.

Jay’s father and Edith are the only two who join Lizzie and Rich for this, and Mike gets the impression that the whole thing is something Lizzie is doing for Jay Sr., and also inadvertently for Edith, who seems the most into it and has the most skill with a golf club, so far as Mike can tell. 

Nobody Mike knew growing up played golf, and his family would disdain the kind of people who did: Jay’s people, Mike supposes. They’re not wealthy, but if Mike had known Jay when they were growing up, he would have called him a rich kid, which was an insult in Mike’s neighborhood. 

“Boy, I suck at this,” Rich says at one point, which Mike appreciates. The less good someone is at golf, the more he likes them. 

“You’re doing fine!” Lizzie says, rubbing Rich’s shoulder. “It’s just nice to be out here, anyway, it’s so pretty out.”

Mike disagrees that it’s pretty out. After they’ve been shooting for an hour he has to take a break to get out of the sweltering heat and sit. He hefts himself into the back of one of the golf carts, settling his camera in his lap and gulping from a third bottle of water. So far the water has done nothing for his screaming hangover, and when Jay comes over to sit beside him, Mike knows he feels the same, or worse. Jay’s tolerance has gone down since he lost weight, and plus he’s just smaller, more fragile, a little waif compared to Mike. 

The cart is small enough that their shoulders are necessarily pressed together. Mike considers that Jay could have sat up front rather than beside him, and he’s almost cheered by this until he remembers that Jay is pretending to date him to spare himself his family’s scrutiny, and that’s why he chose to sit beside Mike, just to further support this infuriating lie. Mike’s mood dips enough for him to decide now is the time to talk about last night.

“Just for the record?” Mike says, leaning over to mutter this in Jay’s ear. “I remember everything both of us said last night. Just so you know.”

Jay says nothing but Mike can see him start to panic. There’s a subtle shift in his jaw, and he swallows, throat bobbing. 

“Have I really ever said anything like that before?” Mike asks, still skeptical about this. “Or are you exaggerating some drunken affection that I do remember being embarrassed about the next day? ‘Cause I remember the time I told you that you were the love of my life--”

“Oh my god.” Jay closes his eyes and lifts one hand in Mike’s direction. “No. Do not do this right now.”

“I’m doing it, Jay. It’s happening. You made a pretty serious fucking accusation about me and my damaged psyche, yet again, and while there may be some truth to it I want to get some facts straight here, okay? I _do_ remember saying you were the love of my life, and that I followed it up with some kind of clumsy explanation, at length, about how I meant that in a platonic, best friends way--”

“Fine, Mike, you’re right. You’re right about everything, just like always. Now stop discussing it. I forbid you to say anything more about this. Ever.”

“Oh, you forbid me? Mmkay, but how ‘bout one more thing I remember, which is the time I told you that you have become a truly beautiful man, and then tried to play it off like a joke, is that one of the love confessions you’re alluding to? Or are there some deep, mournful ones that you want to tell me about? ‘Cause I don’t think I’d have forgotten those either.”

Jay is fuming, silent, his mouth pressed in a tight line.

This fucker. Mike decides to bring out the big guns. It’s time. 

“Here’s another thing I remember, Jay, this time from last night. You told me you once ‘said some stuff back’ to me. Admittedly, I don’t remember this miraculous occasion. So maybe you can enlighten me as to what I said to make you halfway pretend to express an emotion in my presence, and also maybe what this ‘stuff’ you said ‘back’ to me was? Huh? How about that?”

“I hate you,” Jay says, glaring out at the golf action like he wants to blow a hole in the course with his blazing lazer eyes. 

“Oh, is that what you said? Okay, that I’d believe. But guess what, you’ve said that to me before, and I think you were referring to, hmmmm, maybe something else, last night?”

“You know what, you motherfucker?” Jay says, whirling on Mike with a fury that makes him flinch, because are they really going to have their next life-ruining fight here, on a golf course in ninety degree heat while they both slowly die of their mutual hangover? “I did say something pretty fucking amazing to you once, but guess what? You’ll never get to hear it again. Ever. Not even a general description. Because that was a one time thing. And you forgot it. So why the fuck would I tell you again?”

“Wait, is this just about the time you said you idolized me when we first met?” Mike asks, recoiling in disbelief. “‘Cause I remember that. And, also? No kidding, I noticed.”

Jay’s face was already pretty pink from the heat. When it goes blazing red in a blink, Mike knows he’s right.

“Oh, god,” Mike says. “Again, I did not forget. I mean, do I have a drinking problem? Yes, _obviously_ , but you need to check yourself, fool, because, first of all, I remember that, and secondly, that was _not_ a love confession or even all that revealing--”

“Mike, please shut up,” Jay says, looking out at the golf course again. 

He’s not biting this out with rage, suddenly. His voice came out small and scared and shaken, to such a degree that Mike feels like maybe he went too far. But there’s nowhere else to go with Jay. They’ve been everywhere together but too far. 

“Sure,” Mike says. “I’ll leave you alone. ‘Cause that’s all you want from me, right? Just to be left alone, no questions asked. Great, fine. Doing it.” 

Jay says nothing. Mike sighs and looks over at him, away, back again. He puts his arm around Jay, expecting to at least get glared at in response. Jay makes a soft noise under his breath and closes his eyes.

“My head is fucking pounding and I just want to get this golf thing over with,” Jay says. He opens his eyes again, but doesn’t look at Mike. “Please?” 

“Yeah, I know. I’m serious, I’m stopping. Want me to let go of you?”

“We should shoot more--”

“No, we shouldn’t, goddamn! We have an hour of golf footage and everybody’s getting visibly worn down.”

Jay sulks but stays put under Mike’s arm, which is as good as an answer to his question. He doesn’t want Mike to let go of him.

“You sure you don’t want to take a few whacks?” Jay’s father asks, wandering over to the cart while Rich takes his turn. 

“No,” Jay says. “You know how I feel about sports.”

“Mike, not even you?” Jay’s father waggles a golf club in Mike’s direction as if it will tempt him.

“I hate golf,” Mike says. “No offense.”

He feels it when Jay laughs a little, his shoulders twitching under Mike’s arm while he presses his lips together to hide it. 

“None taken,” Jay’s father says. “You two are a matched set, that’s for sure. Is there anything you disagree on?”

“Oh my god,” Jay says. “Yes, of course!”

“Plenty of things,” Mike says, nodding. 

“Hnh, well, I’ve yet to see that. Suit yourselves, anyhow.”

Mike catches himself rubbing Jay’s arm when his father walks off. He didn’t mean to start doing it and feels like he should probably stop, because his thumb is sneaking up under the sleeve of Jay’s t-shirt, touching his skin. Jay is warm and a little damp under Mike’s arm, sweat beaded over his temple. Mike wants to lick it off. 

“If we’re not going to shoot anymore, we should go,” Mike says. “They’ll all fit in the other cart. We can take this one back.” 

“Mhm,” Jay says, and Mike can _feel_ how much Jay wants to leave, to get out of the heat and rest somewhere in the shade, maybe eat something.

“C’mon,” Mike says, squeezing him a little. “We can get some greasy food somewhere. That’ll help.” 

Jay surprises him by agreeing to this plan. Lizzie seems annoyed that they’re leaving, though not because she thinks they should get more footage. Mike gets the impression she doesn’t want to be alone with her father and Edith, but she’s got Rich. He supposes that’s not the same thing as having her brother there, but Jay doesn’t live to serve his family’s emotional needs, and anyway Mike needs him more, away from here.

They don’t speak on the ride back to the parking lot or while they’re loading the equipment into the car. Mike drives, and Jay toys with the radio. The air between them feels lighter already, and Mike isn’t sure why. He hopes he’s not just imagining things. 

The resort has a cheesy restaurant on the beach, less fancy than the brunch one where they went the day before. It has a covered patio with vintage surfboards mounted on the interior walls and fans that are supposed to look like palm fronds spinning overhead. It’s almost three o’clock in the afternoon by the time they’re seated at a table at the back of the patio, and the place is almost empty, just a few salty old dudes at the bar and a couple of families with kids who are old enough not be shrieking at the tables near the edge of the deck.

Jay devours a bacon cheeseburger and Mike does the same, watching Jay eat with a weird satisfaction. Ever since Jay lost the weight and cut back on drinking to stay fit, Mike has taken a sick pleasure in the times Jay lets himself really indulge, and watching Jay ravenously shovel fries dipped in mayo into his mouth is near boner-inducing. 

“Oh god,” Jay says when they’ve both stuffed themselves. Jay moans and puts his elbows on the table, chin in his hand. “I ate too fast.”

“It was glorious.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Come over here.” 

“There?” Jay is seated in a chair, facing Mike, who took the booth so he could slump back against the wall behind him. 

“Yep.” Mike pats the bench seat. “This waitress sucks, we’ll be waiting an eternity for the check. Come put your head on my shoulder for a minute.” 

Jay hesitates, studying Mike’s face. He’s always looking at Mike like he’s waiting to be brutally mocked for being caught wanting something, which is absurd, considering Mike barely hides that he wants Jay more than anything and is at his fucking mercy. 

“Come on!” Mike says, louder than he meant to. Jay doesn’t flinch, or move. “Just do it, you look like you’re gonna pass out. We’re supposed to be a couple, so who gives a fuck?”

Mike isn’t even sure what he means by _supposed to be_ , because nobody in this place is anyone Jay is pretending for.

Jay gets up, his hands braced on the table like he’s not sure he’d be able to stay upright otherwise. He sits next to Mike and gives him a nervous look before turning his gaze down to Mike’s shoulder, which Mike lowers for him in an hopefully inviting way. Jay leans onto Mike and puts his cheek against Mike’s shoulder with a tired moan, his brow pinching a little as he settles there, trying to get comfortable. Mike has been told that he makes a good pillow. He’s never liked the idea before now, but suddenly he fucking loves it, especially when Jay closes his eyes and relaxes onto him, shifting more of his weight against Mike’s arm and exhaling in a way that sounds like, oh, thank you, yeah.

Am I the only one who gets to see you like this, Mike wonders, resisting the urge to bring his face down and bury it in Jay’s hair, afraid it would scare him away. He also wants to ask, because he knows the answer to that first question: why’s that, why me.

“Is your boyfriend okay?” the waitress asks when she comes to clear their plates. Jay is sleeping so peacefully that he doesn’t startle, just goes on breathing evenly against Mike’s shoulder.

“He’s fine,” Mike says, whispering. “Thanks.”

Mike tries to get his card out to pay without waking Jay, but it doesn’t work. When Jay wakes up he lifts his head and blinks foggily at Mike. Their faces are close. Mike can hear it when Jay swallows. 

“What time is it?” Jay asks, voice scratchy. He’s looking into Mike’s eyes like they’re the clock that’s going to tell him if it’s time to stop waiting to know for sure that they won’t both be destroyed if they finally do this. 

And that’s when Mike realizes that Jay has been looking at him like that since about 2002.

“I know I can’t just grab you and kiss you,” Mike says. “But--”

Jay leans in and does it himself, closing his eyes and bringing his hand up to Mike’s cheek to anchor him close. At first it’s more mustache than anything, but then Jay’s lips are pressed to Mike’s, and Jay’s tongue peeks out to meet Mike’s first cautious lick against his mouth and oh nooooo. It’s sweet and soft and sleepy and everything around them and in fact the entire world suddenly seems perfect, smelling of french fries and the nearby ocean, tropical breezes, beers with limes stuffed into them. It _is_ perfect, until Jay pulls back and blinks at Mike, wet-lipped, to say:

“I feel like shit.”

“Well.” Mike clears his throat. “That’s. One thing you don’t necessarily want to hear after the person you’re in love with kisses you. For the first time. Or ever.”

“Oh, shut up.” Jay pets Mike’s cheek and almost kisses him again, swooning toward his mouth and stopping short to give him a nervous or maybe even apologetic look, his thumb still stroking over Mike’s five o’clock shadow. “I don’t mean it like that. I just, I meant-- Like. Please take me home because I’m hungover and I’m dizzy and I just want to be someplace where there’s nobody but you, okay? Please?”

Home? Mike thinks, and then he kisses Jay again, nodding. 

Mike makes two wrong turns on the way back to the villa, cursing himself and trying to deny that his hands are shaking on the steering wheel. He’s so close to experiencing the massive relief that he’s been telling himself for years that he’ll never actually know, and it’s driving him insane with anxiety. Jay reaches over to touch Mike’s thigh, keeping his eyes pointed forward at the windshield. His palm feels hot even through Mike’s jeans. Mike wonders if they should be, like, talking about it, or if that would ruin everything before it even really begins. 

When they finally get back it’s almost five o’clock. Jay’s mother and Arnold are out and the house is empty, nobody making cocktails. Mike wants nothing to do with alcohol for the foreseeable future. He follows Jay up to their bedroom without a word and shuts the door behind them. Jay turns toward him, standing in the middle of the room and rubbing his hands over his hips like he doesn’t know what to do with them.

“We left the equipment in the car,” Jay says as soon as Mike takes a step toward him.

“So what? This place is like a prison, there’s guards and cameras everywhere. No one’s gonna steal our shit.”

“I--” Jay stares up into Mike’s face when he walks close, closer. Jay is breathing a little hard, looks terrified. “I don’t know, like, how--”

“I know you don’t.” Does he know this, though? Mike isn’t entirely sure what the hell is going on. Jay is radiating unsurety, like he thinks he won’t sufficiently impress Mike with whatever happens next. Mike has been over-impressed for years and would take anything. “Just, uh. Do you want to take a real nap?”

“No,” Jay says. “I’m awake now.”

Mike almost groans, because: yeah. He feels the same. 

“Okay, so.” He decides he’d better approach this with an air of absurdity, because Jay is already taking it too seriously and freaking himself out. “Want to play a game?”

“A game?” Jay looks like he’ll cry if Mike doesn’t say the right thing. “What?”

“It’s called who can take their pants off faster.”

“Oh, god.” Jay smiles, at least. “No thanks. Or, wait. Yes. Let’s just--” Jay points at the bed. “Without pants.”

“Um. Agreed. Go!”

For a moment it’s like they really are going to race each other out of their pants, but then they both laugh, and for once it’s a mutual laughing-at-each-other, because they were actually going to get competitive about who could get out of their pants faster for a minute there. 

Mike does get his off faster than Jay, though. 

He climbs onto the bed when he’s stripped down to his t-shirt and boxers and stretches out on his side, feeling even more clueless than he did when he first felt up a girl at fourteen, which is stupid, because he’s been with a guy before. Twice!

But Jay is different. Special. Jay is the love of his life-- For real, unfortunately. Or fortunately, maybe, finally, because Jay is crawling toward him in his boxers and t-shirt, blushing but determined-looking. He flops down beside Mike with a defeated noise and gives him a look that’s like: help me? 

Which is confusing, in terms of knowing what to do next. 

“Are you still feeling shitty?” Mike asks, and he settles his hand on Jay’s shoulder again, gently, half-expecting him to flinch away again. 

“I feel okay now,” Jay says, voice small. He moves closer with a little grunt, his gaze flicking down to Mike’s chest and then up to his eyes again. 

“Do you want to-- Talk?” Mike asks.

“God no.” 

Jay closes his eyes before surging up for a kiss, which is the cutest fucking thing and enough to blow the last of Mike’s hesitation away like dandelion fluff. He grabs Jay’s face and tightens his grip on Jay’s shoulder, half rolls onto him and kisses him until his breath gets all stuttery. Jay wraps both his arms around Mike’s neck and kisses back like he wants to keep up but can’t figure out how to do this and also breathe. He’s braced his knee on Mike’s gut as if he might need to use it as leverage if Mike goes too far. 

Mike wants to go too far, right away. He hasn’t let himself think about it much in recent years, but oh god he has thought about this, so much, and Jay tastes amazing, salty from that meal they just ate and sweet, too, for some reason Mike can’t name. Mike can feel Jay’s short nails on the back of his neck, scrabbling there with a kind of helplessness that makes Mike groan against Jay’s mouth, loud enough to maybe scare him, because he pulls back and gives Mike a blown-open, lost look, pupils huge and spinny. 

“I’m really weird about sex,” Jay says, blurting this when Mike leans in to kiss him again.

“Yeah, I gathered. I don’t care, good.”

“Good? No, Mike, you. You don’t know what I mean. I mean I’m really--”

“So what? You’re in bed with me. Presumably because you want to be. I’ve lived for thirty-five years without this and now I have it, and I don’t care if your fetish is putting a live octopus on my face. Fine, do it! I’ll be into it, ‘cause it’s you lowering the octopus onto me, that’s all I need.”

“It’s not a fetish thing! It’s-- Ah, fuck, see. This is why I just never did anything.” 

“What’s why? Huh?”

“Trying to have to explain it at all! I can’t. Or don’t want to. I feel like even if someone is about to fuck me, it’s still none of their business. Which is part of the problem. I think.”

Mike sits up on his elbow. He needs to get control of this situation, because if it slips away from him now-- Now?? He won’t survive.

“Okay,” he says, cupping Jay’s face in his hand again. “But considering I’m fucking in love with you and will do anything you say, can you at least try to tell me what you want? Or don’t want? Obviously I’m your slave either way. Look at what I’ve put up with already, look what I’m addicted to.”

“What are you addicted to?” Jay asks, mumbling like he’s afraid to know. “About-- This? Me?”

“It’s a little something I like to call any crumb you throw me, so throw me one, damn you.”

Jay looks pleased by this, or calmer, or both. Mike hopes he’s not imagining things.

“It’s not a matter of, like, one or two things I want or don’t want,” Jay says. “Or even ten things. Or a hundred. There’s no octopus, okay? Jesus, I wish there was a fucking octopus. That would really simplify things. It’s more, like-- I don’t get it, I don’t-- Get why I want it so much and feel so fucking freaked out by it at the same time.”

Mike wants to ask if Jay is telling him he’s never actually had sex, is that what this is? He puts in a pin in that and decides not to make Jay say so right now. That would probably be too much, and he’s already looking up at Mike with that _save me, help me_ face. 

“Fair enough,” Mike says. “I can dig that, like. Maybe what you need, Jay, uhh. Is to just think of it differently. Like, in a way that takes the pressure off. And maybe I could help, um. You’re pretty good at being directed, soo. I could just. Direct you. If you want.”

“That sounds stupid,” Jay says, but he looks interested in hearing more.

“Well, spoiler alert, Jay, a lot of sex is about feeling kinda stupid, especially at first, ‘cause it’s pretty ridiculous if you overthink it. But it’s also worth it, or it can be, if you trust the other person not to, like, laugh at you.”

They give each other a look like: hmmm. 

“How about this,” Mike says. He’s full of ideas, already. “We could do, like, a test. Like a screen test, when you fix the lighting or whatever, before you actually shoot. And even during the shooting you can say, CUT, right, if something isn’t working, or you can be like, that sucked, do another take.”

Jay rolls his eyes at this metaphor. Mike can see he’s also trying not to grin.

“You lie there judging my efforts, basically,” Mike said, eyebrows lifting. “With complete, unsentimental honesty and not a thought spared for my feelings. I know you can do that.”

Jay makes a face like he’s offended and pleased by this observation at the same time. 

“And what would your efforts be, exactly?” he asks. 

“Take your shirt off and I’ll show you, okay?” 

Mike opens with this mostly to see if Jay is willing to take direction at all. Jay studies Mike’s face as if he’s searching for a lurking punchline, then sits up with a huff and pulls his shirt over his head. The look he gives Mike when he stretches out on his back again is sheepish, as if he’s suddenly not sure that he looks good now, filled-out and streamlined at the same time, pale from the long months of winter and pink across his cheeks, shoulders twitching. 

He looks better than good, fucking edible. Mike wonders if he should say so, but knowing Jay that would probably make him more skittish and insecure, not less. 

“Okay, so.” Mike opens his hand and holds it just over Jay’s chest, as if Jay is a Ouija board Mike is preparing to take readings from. He checks Jay’s expression. Jay looks curious, unsure. When he meets Mike’s eyes he also looks like he’s pleading for something, wanting. “Commencing with test number one,” Mike says. “Left shoulder.” 

Jay turns his cheek to watch Mike settle his hand on his shoulder and squeeze gently. 

“You’ve done more than that to me already,” Jay says.

“Shh, just go with it! This is a delicate process.”

“Oh, so you’ve done this before?”

Mike considers the question. He’s taken someone’s virginity before, yes. But he was a fumbling virgin himself at the time and isn’t sure he’d consider himself an expert. He also doesn’t want to suggest that Jay is a virgin, though he’s getting that impression more and more. He doesn’t _love_ that he’s extremely aroused by the idea that it could be true, that he could be Jay’s first everything, but there it is.

“I haven’t done this before, no,” Mike says, rubbing Jay’s shoulder now. “I’m basing my approach more on what I know about you than what I know about sex, if I’m honest.”

“Fantastic.” Jay stiffens up a little under Mike’s touch. “You can move on from my shoulders, by the way. You already touch me there in public, so you should know I’m fine with it.”

Fine with it, huh. If this situation wasn’t so delicate Mike might point out that Jay is clearly more than fine with Mike’s arm around him in view of his family. He’s started to lean into it needfully, every time. 

Mike moves his hand lower, resting it between Jay’s pecs and settling his thumb over the hollow of Jay’s throat. Jay swallows and watches this, eyelashes fluttering over his cheeks and shoulders pressing back in a way that makes Mike want to look down and see if he’s getting hard. He doesn’t dare to, yet. 

“This okay?” Mike asks, stroking his thumb into the soft dip between Jay’s collarbones.

“Mhmm.” Jay meets Mike’s eyes and nods. “Yeah, you can. Keep going.”

Mike has to withhold another smart ass remark, or maybe it would be more like straight-forward taunting, because his impulse is to ask Jay if he wants more. Mike so wants to hear him angrily admit that yes, he does. It’s too early going for anything like that, so Mike just slides his hand down over Jay’s chest slowly, wondering if he should dare to touch Jay’s peaking little nipples or if that’s too advanced. 

“Are you cold?” Mike asks, dragging his eyes up from Jay’s chest to meet his gaze. 

“Huh? No.” 

“Oh, so. Hmm.” Mike inches his hand closer to Jay’s right nipple, pointing one finger out to make his intentions clear.

Jay doesn’t protest this course of action, just bites his lip and nods once, breathing a little harder through his nose.

Mike dares a glance downward and has to fight the impulse to lift his fist into the air and bring it down in a triumphant _cha-ching_ gesture, because oh god, thank god. Jay is tenting his boxers already, and he sucks in his breath when Mike gives his nipple a little tap. 

“Okay?” Mike asks, meeting Jay’s eyes again. Jay’s are hazy already, and his shoulders keep curling forward and then relaxing back onto the bed again. 

“Okay-- Yeah.” Jay closes his eyes, chews his lip. 

Mike increases the pressure a little, then a little more, rubbing his fingertip in slow circles. Jay looks mildly stunned: lips parted, brow a little pinched. He peeks at what Mike is doing and then closes his eyes again, turning his cheek against the pillow.

“Feel okay?” Mike asks, sliding his hand over to work on the other nipple. 

“Mhm,” Jay says, licking his lips. “Yeah.”

He keeps his eyes closed and exhales in little huffs through his nose when Mike works on his left nipple same as the other one. Mike wonders how long he should wait to use his tongue, his teeth.

Because Jay is really fucking hard for this, inching his thighs apart as if to make space for his dick, which is pressing against the front of boxers so tightly that it must hurt a little. Maybe Mike is just projecting, increasingly desperate to pull out his own erection. 

“None of this is gonna bother me because it’s you,” Jay says, opening his eyes to meet Mike’s. 

“Well-- Good?” Mike says, not sure why Jay is looking at him like this is some kind of issue. 

“Just. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s like I crossed some threshold with you and anything goes at this point.”

Yeah that’s called trust, Mike wants to say, but rather than be condescending he kisses Jay’s forehead and slides his hand down over Jay’s chest, toward his belly. 

“Fuck,” Jay says, whispering this when Mike rubs his fingertips and then his knuckles over Jay’s trembling stomach: soft, soothing him and teasing him at the same time. “Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t know, hah. You can, um. You can--” 

“Hmm?” 

Jay shakes his head and winces a little, thrusting his hips up when Mike rubs his stomach more firmly, spreading his fingers wide.

Mike knows exactly what Jay is fucking asking for, but he wants to hear it.

“Tell me,” Mike says when Jay meets his eyes again, breathing hard now. “Like, it’s okay, man, look-- I won’t laugh, I swear. No matter what, not about this. It might not always seem that way, but nobody takes you more seriously than I do.”

“Mike,” Jay says, and then he just grabs Mike’s hand with both of his and brings it to his tented dick. Jay groans and fucks himself up against Mike’s palm, arching off the bed like a porn star and going wild for just this, eyes smashed shut and mouth open. He presses both his hands down around Mike’s fingers to get him to tighten his grip, and Mike moans deep in his chest, lurching over to kiss Jay on the mouth while he squeezes and rubs Jay’s dick, going to town on it like he’s overflowing with clueless need, too, because he is.

They hear footsteps on the stairs and freeze, eyes blowing open like they’re teenagers having their first fumble together in a twin bed under a Star Wars poster, about to be caught. 

“Jay?” his mom calls from the hallway, and Jay rolls out of bed like he’s trained for this, fully on his feet in a blink.

“Wah-- Yeah?”

“You guys almost ready to head to the rehearsal dinner? Lizzie said you should get there early to, ya know, do the lighting.”

“Oh-- Sure, yeah, just. Just gonna take a quick shower!”

Jay bolts into the bathroom and slams the door shut behind him without a single look back at Mike. 

Mike remains on the bed, breathing hard and listening to Jay’s mother’s footsteps as she makes her way back downstairs. He hears the shower come on in the bathroom. Jay is probably taking a cold one, so Mike probably shouldn’t try to join him. 

Mike’s dick is throbbing against the front of his boxers, meanwhile. He can’t remember being this hard in a while-- Ever? Because holy, holy shit. Jay was like a live wire under his hands, and Mike can’t begin to process this, it’s too good, maybe even good that they got interrupted, because he needs to think, also needs to come, real bad, will never make it through this rehearsal dinner with his sanity intact if he doesn’t unload first.

He walks over to the room’s mini trashcan and grabs a handful of tissues, using them to make a kind of nest inside the trashcan before stumbling down to kneel over it. He checks back over his shoulder. The shower is still running, so maybe Jay is taking a warm one after all, pulling himself off under the water to the thought of Mike’s hand on him. Which is ridiculous, because Mike is right here, on the other side of the door, closing his eyes and picturing Jay touching himself in the shower, imagining him rubbing one hand over his chest while frantically jacking his dick with the other, teeth digging into his bottom lip, maybe telling himself he’s so bad, so out of control, just for this. 

Mike needs to come before Jay catches him out here doing this, regardless of whatever’s going on in the bathroom, so he flicks that gentle fantasy aside and swaps it for something filthy, like: what kind of noises Jay would make if Mike pushed both of Jay’s legs up against his chest and licked down over his balls, lower, if he pulled Jay’s innocent, unsuspecting ass cheeks apart and ate him out until he was crying into his little hands. It’s Mike’s number one fantasy that he’s never actually tried in real life, because who could ever be worthy or for that matter sanitary enough to deserve that from him? He barely knows the people he fucks. But Jay, oh, Jay: he might be evil but he’s also so sweet and squeaky clean, and would be shocked into literal fucking tears while Mike made him lose his mind for having his ass tongued open, would come all over himself for the feeling. 

This works: Mike swallows down his groan and pumps his load into the trashcan, mostly hitting the tissues as planned. He hurriedly flings more of them over the evidence when he hears the shower shut off, and he’s still shaky and short of breath as he struggles to his feet. He strips one more tissue over his cock to clean himself off, watching the bathroom door and wondering what Jay would even do or say if he came out and saw Mike cleaning up the remnants of his jerk off. Prior to today, Mike would guess that Jay would just pretend he didn’t realize what was going on and breeze out of the room, in nothing but a towel if he had to, but what now? What the hell is going to happen next, after what just happened on the bed, also in that restaurant, not to mention last night on the beach? Mike has no idea.

He’s buttoning up one of two nice shirts that he brought when Jay emerges from the bathroom in his towel, looking startled, as if he didn’t expect Mike to still be in the room.

“Are jeans okay at this thing?” Mike asks. 

“Yeah.” Jay frowns and looks down at himself then up at Mike again. He’s done his hair and looks mostly dried off. “I think? It’s just a rehearsal dinner.”

“I’m not entirely sure what that is.”

“It’s, like. The bride and groom are going to rehearse the ceremony, and afterward there’s a dinner. People do toasts. That’s it.”

“Oh.”

They stare at each other. Jay presses his lips together and exhales through his nose. Mike steps into his jeans, and from the corner of his eye he sees Jay gathering the clothes he’s going to wear to this thing. This seems like a crossroads: will Jay just drop his towel and get dressed out here in the room, post-grabbing Mike’s hand and rubbing it on his cock? Or will he retreat into the bathroom like he needs to keep this last wall up between them, even now?

Jay hesitates, holding his boxers and pants and a pale gray button-up shirt against his chest. 

“Sorry,” he says, giving Mike a bashful glance. 

“For what? It’s okay, you don’t have to--”

“For saying you didn’t remember that stuff, I. Really thought you didn’t, um. So, sorry.”

Jay goes into the bathroom and shuts the door halfway. Mike makes a point not to peek in at him while he gets dressed, because this feels like a good compromise. He appreciates the apology, and is so in love with Jay that he wants to get down on the floor and weep pathetically. He’ll follow whatever lead Jay wants him to from here on out. They could dance around each other for another fifteen years and Mike wouldn’t complain. 

Or maybe he would, in some kind of eventual unhinged rant like the one he leveled at Jay on the beach last night, but regardless he would stay, waiting, forever, as long as Jay is willing to listen to him rant like that and kiss him anyway, like he can’t help it, because he long ago lost his mind over wanting it, same as Mike.


	5. Chapter 5

They ride to the rehearsal dinner in the backseat of the rental car, Arnold driving this time, Jay’s mother in the passenger seat. Their camera equipment is piled around them, and they’re both completely silent, only grunting or nodding in response to Jay’s mother’s comments. Mike feels as tightly wound as he would have if he hadn’t jerked off into a trashcan, and he knows Jay feels the same way. It’s in the air between them, like a tangible thing that Mike wants to lick and cuddle almost as much as he wants to do that and more, everything, to Jay.

Because is this the start of something, finally? In tripping little stages, because of course it would be that way between them even after they crossed one threshold, then another? 

Feels like it, because Mike feels so good, so almost-complete, already. Like someone found the last puzzle piece that he’s been missing, the tiny beating heart of the whole big picture, the one that will fill the spot that cold wind has been howling through all Mike’s life, and they’re carrying it toward the place where the rest of him is spread out, slow and steady: the way Jay would do it, because of course it’s all still hinging on whether he snaps that piece into place or not.

Mike swallows and bites the inside of his cheek, instructing his dick not to stiffen. It’s like Jay’s blushing seeming-innocence has brought Mike back to the age when he knew what that was like, when random boners would pop up just because his crush was sitting a foot away from him in the backseat of a car, smelling like the body wash he used in the shower and that hair product, what the fuck is that stuff? It’s always smelled crack-like to Mike, something he wants to snort. The sound of Jay’s mother’s voice kills the beginnings of Mike’s threatening arousal, but he’s still wired as fuck when they arrive at the rehearsal dinner venue, his vision tunneling hopelessly to Jay as they attempt to set their stuff up for filming, both of them clumsy and cursing when they almost fumble a lens, a light.

Mike can barely register their surroundings beyond the fact that it’s an upscale restaurant still on the resort grounds but not on the beach, and that a private room in back has been rented for the rehearsal dinner. The actual rehearsal must be over, because Lizzie and Rich are present, introducing people to their friend Jack, who will apparently officiate the wedding. 

“Ah, the brother of the bride!” Jack says when he shakes Jay’s hand. Jay looks like he’s on another planet, and Mike loves that he can tell what Jay is feeling just by looking at him-- Finally, for fucking once. He can barely refocus when he shakes Jack’s hand.

“Mike is Jay’s boyfriend,” Lizzie says. There’s still an edge of suspicion in it, and Mike grins when he realizes that, whatever she thinks, it’s reality now, or as good as. “He owns the VCR shop with Jay.”

“That is so cool,” Jack says, and he seems to mean it, grinning. “A VCR repair shop! Hilarious!”

“Yeah, we tend to find our life’s work hilarious, too,” Mike says, not even mad. Jack just laughs.

“Same here,” he says. “I’m a professional clown.”

Mike laughs hard, then realizes Jack is serious. Jay is sort of wincing while trying to downplay his smile, visibly holding in laughter.

“It’s no weirder than what you guys do,” Lizzie says, narrowing her eyes at Mike.

“Yeah it is,” Rich says, cackling. “I mean, just by a bit,” he says when Lizzie gives him a look. He kisses her forehead and she shrugs, smiling.

“You’re all weirdos,” she says, probably half a bottle of champagne into the evening.

That makes Mike wonder: does he want a drink? It’s usually not a question. He doesn’t feel hungover anymore, but his stomach is still a little tender. He decides to wait until they’re done filming, hoists his camera and points it at Lizzie.

“How’d the rehearsal go?” he asks, adjusting the focus on her glowing smile. Lizzie has all of Jay’s best features and none of the more awkward ones, is more classically pretty, but zooming in on her now, Mike thinks she’s got nothing on Jay. She’s beautiful but generic in comparison. Jay is the real fucking thing.

Lizzie talks about the rehearsal, and Jay wanders off to shoot something else while Mike films her and Rich taking turns to talk about how they met this clown Jack and decided to bring him to the tropics as their wedding officiant. At one point Jack starts making balloon animals, which is weird enough to make Mike feel like he’s filming some kind of arthouse movie that he designed with Jay, the kind of thing they used to talk about doing together. It’s all sort of suddenly, beautifully strange. Mike keeps catching himself scanning the crowd with the camera and zooming in on Jay before panning away again.

Jay is pretty quickly back at Mike’s side, giving him instructions about which shots he wants. It’s different from the previous two days, because Jay keeps touching Mike’s arm while speaking to him, squeezing a little when Mike meets his eyes, and he’s audibly breathless when Mike leans in close to hear him over the noise of the crowd. 

“Actually, come here,” Jay says, putting his camera down on an empty table. “I need-- To show you something, actually.”

“Mhm,” Mike says, putting his camera down, too. He weaves through the crowd, following Jay past Jack, who is making balloon animals for Josh and the other cousins, past Edith, who is giving them a knowing look that Mike doesn’t give a fuck about right now, and past a waiter with a tray of glasses bubbling with champagne. 

They leave the private dining room altogether and walk out into the main restaurant, which is crowded, too, noisy with conversation and the clatter of dishes in the kitchen as they pass by its swinging doors, heading down a dark hallway where there’s an ancient payphone still mounted on the wall between the two restrooms. 

At the very back of this hallway, Jay turns toward Mike and makes a sound under his breath that’s like begging, reaching for him. 

Mike grabs him and kisses him so hard that Jay’s back hits the wall behind him. Mike presses him there, hands on Jay’s waist, hiding Jay behind the shelter of his bigger body in this shadowy corner, though he also doesn’t care who might see Jay throw his arms around Mike’s neck and lean up onto his toes to kiss him back, breathing hard and pushing his hands into Mike’s hair. Once they really get going Jay lifts his leg up against Mike’s like he’s going to start humping his thigh. Mike wants to shove in between Jay’s legs so bad that he’s close to actually letting himself do it when Jay moans and breaks their kiss.

“Okay, wait,” Jay says when Mike moves down to lick his throat. “Sorry, just.” Jay tents his hands over his mouth, maybe to keep Mike from kissing him again, closes his eyes and sucks in his breath sharply. He opens his eyes when he exhales, and gives Mike a nervous smile. “We have to go back, I just. Needed to. Do that.”

“Uh-huh,” Mike says, and Jay laughs against Mike’s mouth when Mike kisses him again. 

“Seriously,” Jay says, whispering and rearing back, his head thunking against the wall behind him. He’s still holding Mike against him, wrinkling Mike’s nice shirt. “I, um. Don’t know, I don’t know what’s happening.” 

“Yes, you do,” Mike says, licking his cheek. “But, yeah.” He steps backward, smirking when Jay looks distressed and tries to hold him in place. “Let’s go back, you’re right. We gotta finish the job in there, and then. Then we can do whatever we want.”

Jay whines a little, nodding. Mike can’t help it, kisses him again. He keeps it as chaste as he can, bracing his hands on the wall behind Jay’s head and only licking past Jay’s lips in a few shallow strokes of his tongue before pulling free.

“Fuck,” Mike says, touching Jay’s belt buckle as he steps away from him. Jay is wearing nice slacks and a shirt that fits him perfectly. “This is a really good look on you.”

Jay looks down at himself. “This shirt?” he says.

“Mhm-hmm,” Mike says, though he meant something more like: overwhelmed, needy, ducked into a shadowy backroom corner and halfway to begging Mike to stick his hand down those well-fitting pants.

They still have to get through the dinner. The toasts seem to go on forever, and Mike’s wrist is aching from holding the camera by the time the last one is finished. He didn’t hear a word of them, doesn’t care about anything except Jay sitting next to him when they finally put their equipment away and settle in to attempt to eat. This time Edith is seated on the other side of Mike, and she seems to want to talk, which is a problem, because Mike’s can’t really think about anything except how much he wants to rip Jay’s clothes off as soon as they’re back in that bedroom together. 

“What did you two do today?” Edith asks, leaning onto the table so she can address this question to Jay as well as Mike. “After golf, I mean.” 

“Nothing,” Jay says. 

“We were hungover after the sailboat thing,” Mike says. “So we just took it easy.”

“Ah, I thought maybe you weren’t feeling so well.” 

She gives Jay a pointed glance. Mike doesn’t like the way she looks at him. It’s not mean, but it’s exacting, or something. It’s true that Jay looks a lot like his father, so maybe she’s just drooling over the younger version of her man. Mike settles his shoulder against Jay’s, thinking this. 

“I thought maybe you two were having a fight,” Edith says, shifting her gaze back to Mike. “And then you left, so.” 

“These two, fight?” Jay’s father says, hearing this and turning toward them. He’s seated on the other side of Edith, has his arm slung around the back of her chair. “I can’t imagine that.”

“Well, it’s happened,” Jay says, and then he seems to regret needing to prove his father wrong badly enough to bring this up. He grabs for his glass of water and gulps from it.

“Now what could you two ever fight over?” Jay’s father asks. 

“Who can remember,” Mike says, now wanting a drink. The whole fight that lead to their five month separation is etched into his soul like evil runes that still burn him from time to time. He remembers every word Jay said back then, and really doesn’t want to think about any of them right now. He puts his arm around Jay and turns to him. “Doesn’t matter now,” he says, leaning over to kiss Jay on the cheek, hoping that’s allowed.

Jay gives Mike a tiny smile and melts a little, pressing closer against Mike’s side. It takes a lot of restraint for Mike to not kiss him on the lips in front of everyone. 

“You know, I always wondered,” Jay’s father says, and Mike half-turns toward him, bracing himself. “Especially after our Jay-bird cleaned himself up last year. We always thought, when’s he going to have a girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever--”

“Dad,” Lizzie says, noticing this from across the table, but he doesn’t hear her. Jay has gone tense under Mike’s arm, is staring at his water glass.

“But now it all makes sense!” Jay’s father says, lifting his beer. “‘Cause he was just holding out for this guy.” He winks at Mike. “Here’s to you two, by the way. Glad you finally worked it out.”

“Thanks,” Mike says flatly, squeezing Jay under his arm like a signal that he knows Jay hates this but it’s okay, Mike is here, for real now, and was holding out, too, because every one night stand he had along the way was just part of how he miserably bided his time, waiting for this. He glances over at Jay to make sure he’s all right. Jay looks irritated but not too freaked out, eyes unfocused. 

“That must have been brutal,” Edith says, and Mike grits his teeth, needing to change the subject. “Best friends for fifteen years, wanting each other?”

“Let’s do this officially,” Jay’s father says, standing with his beer bottle, and oh no. Everyone turns to look at him. “This is Lizzie’s special night, of course, but I should toast my boy, too, for finding his true love. Or, realizing he found him all those years ago, I suppose. Congrats, guys. We all always sorta thought your whole VCR repair venture was just an excuse to stay together for whatever crazy reason you could come up with--”

“Dad,” Lizzie snaps, and her left eye twitches when her father meets her gaze. “That’s great, thanks. Toasts are over, though.”

“Oh, geez, all right, sorry, kiddo.”

He sits down, chuckling to himself and drinking his beer. Mike understands the pickle story, suddenly, and feels like a shithead for laughing about it. 

“Say, has anyone gone to the little museum here on the island?” Rich asks, catching Mike’s grateful gaze when he’s successfully drawn everyone’s attention, changing the subject. “It’s a history museum, me and Lizzie went yesterday after golf, it’s pretty neat.”

When everyone is suitably distracted, Mike leans over to whisper in Jay’s ear:

“Want to get out of here?”

Jay nods and gives Mike a desperate, broken-open look, exhaling heavily. 

“Not yet, though,” he whispers back, face close to Mike’s. Because of course he doesn’t want to run out of here before the others leave, with everyone’s eyes on them and minds on what they might do next, or why Jay wanted to bolt early. “But, yeah, soon.” 

“Kay.” 

Mike kisses Jay’s cheek again and touches his leg under the table. Jay peers up into Mike’s face with all the guarded hesitation that kept Mike at an arms’s length for so long wiped clear from his eyes. Mike shifts him closer under his arm, in a way that probably makes it too obvious that he’s thinking about jumping Jay’s bones after this. He clears his throat and drinks some water, makes himself sit up straighter. When he meets Lizzie’s eyes across the table she’s smiling at him both like she believes this is real now and like she finally thinks Mike is good enough for Jay, maybe.

Mike spends the remainder of the dinner fighting his urge to do more to Jay under the table than just squeeze his leg. Jay puts his hand over Mike’s at one point, either to encourage him or control him, Mike doesn’t care. He can smell Jay’s hair product, and if there wasn’t so much inane chitchat clogging the air over the table he’d be hard just for that. 

“So you went to film school,” Edith says to Mike when the dessert plates are being cleared and Rich is paying the check. 

Mike snorts and looks at her, like: lady, I’m on to you. Though he’s not actually sure what her deal is, entirely. 

“Yep,” he says flatly. “Why, did you?”

She laughs. “No, but I have a degree in fine art.”

“Oh. Cool. That come in handy in your line of work?”

She smirks at him. Mike regrets the comment a little, as someone who is sensitive about this himself. 

“Sometimes,” she says. “In the sense that I can go to all the world’s great museums. One of the benefits of having free flights.”

Mike nods, feeling like maybe she’s actually some kind of kindred spirit, since she doesn’t pull punches and doesn’t have the life she thought she would but is okay with it, maybe because she found her Jay, too. 

It feels like they’ve been at the rehearsal dinner for an eternity by the time they’re loading all their stuff into the rental car, then climbing in back and bracing themselves for ten minutes of small talk with Jay’s mother. The fizzy excitement that built between Mike and Jay on the way there has become a kind of hardened, heavy need and Mike can barely sit still, his leg bouncing crazily as he tries to focus on what Jay’s mother is saying. 

“Your father’s such a piece of work,” she says after a while, fuming. 

“It’s fine,” Jay mumbles.

“It’s not fine! He drank too much, and he knows you don’t like that kind of thing. I bet if you two got married you’d just go off and elope somewhere by yourselves, huh?”

Arnold is driving, and Mike realizes now that it’s because Jay’s mother had too much to drink, too. She turns and gives them a beseeching look.

“Which would be fine, if that’s what you two want,” she says, very seriously. “But you should know we’d love to be there, if you were okay with it. Maybe just me and Lizzie and Arnold and Rich, something like that?”

“Honey,” Arnold says, eyes still on the road.

“Oh, all right. I know, I’m sorry. I’m as bad as him!”

“You’re most certainly not,” Arnold says, reaching over to pat her knee.

The heavy clouds that had gathered during dinner break overhead as they pull up to the villa, and the downpour pounds the roof of the car, then soaks all four of them as they bolt for the front door. Mike and Jay leave all their equipment in the car, not wanting it to get wet, and say goodnight to Arnold and Jay’s mother, who head for their downstairs bedroom. Mike follows Jay up the stairs, staring at his ass on the way there and almost losing his footing despite being completely sober. That shirt looks even better soaking wet, clinging to Jay’s shoulders and back. 

The bedroom is dark when they hurry into it together, both breathing like they ran up the stairs. Mike supposes they kind of did, taking them two at once by the time they reached the top. He kicks the door shut behind him and leaves the lights off, doesn’t need them to feel his way through the dark and find Jay reaching for him, too. 

Jay makes a soft, thankful noise when Mike pins him tight against his chest and licks his lips apart. Mike tugs at Jay’s shirt collar with one hand and grabs his ass with the other, already telling himself not to be too rough. He can taste the rain on Jay’s skin, and Jay’s tongue is sweet and hot from the brandy on the prissy baked pear dessert he ate before they left the restaurant. 

“Taking this off,” Mike says, already opening the buttons of Jay’s shirt clumsily, trying not to pop any and wanting to just tear the whole thing open in one pull. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Jay says, whispering, and he starts working on Mike’s buttons, fingers shaking. 

Mike keeps kissing Jay while opening his shirt, and he tugs too hard when he’s at the final button, feels it coming loose. He doesn’t give a fuck, will buy Jay a new shirt or tenderly sew the button back on himself, whatever Jay wants. At the moment all he cares about is shoving the shirt off of Jay and running his hands over Jay’s shivering back and chest, moaning as quietly as he can manage for the feeling of Jay’s bare skin under his hands, goosebumps rising and nipples peaked for him. 

“Hey,” Mike says, pulling back to hold Jay’s face, making himself slow down and breathe for a second. “This is, still-- Just tell me, okay, if you want to stop.”

“I don’t want to stop,” Jay says, shaking his head like there’s no going back now, which is exactly how Mike feels, like this ride has left the fucking station and all they can do is hold on while it rockets them along its track. 

Mike’s eyes have adjusted to the dark, and there’s enough patio light glow spilling in through the slatted blinds that he can see how fat Jay’s pupils have gotten, how shameless and wide-eyed and wanting he is, licking over his lips and pushing Mike’s shirt open without taking his eyes off Mike’s face. Jay moans when he looks down, grinning triumphantly, as if he didn’t just see Mike’s chubby, hairy chest in the pool yesterday. Was that the whole reason he wanted Mike to go swimming with him? Jesus, maybe. 

Jay lifts his hand but hesitates like he’s not sure he’s allowed to touch. Mike feels like his knees are going to buckle from sheer want, so he nudges Jay toward the bed, unfastening Jay’s belt for him on the way there. 

“Listen,” Mike says, flinging his shirt off when Jay bounces down onto the bed with his belt hanging open, legs spreading. “I can’t even rationally express how much I fucking want you right now, so. Don’t let me get carried away, like. Just tell me if you need to slow down.”

“I’m not stupid,” Jay says. He flops onto his back and reaches down to open his pants. “I know you’ll do whatever I want.” 

“Oh, ho ho, do you?”

“Mike.” Jay moans and arches off the bed a little, reaching for him. “Please, god, just. Fucking destroy me, whatever, I’m not afraid anymore.”

“Jesus, man.” Mike gets out of his jeans as quick as he can, pushes his shoes off along with them and flings off his socks. When he’s down to his boxers he’s almost growling under his breath at the sight of Jay hard and waiting for him, scooting out of his pants. Mike falls onto Jay when he’s still got his pants pushed down just to his thighs, can’t wait any longer. He props himself up on his elbows and settles his weight onto Jay, watches Jay’s eyelashes flutter, feels him pressing up for more. “Don’t want to destroy you,” Mike mutters when Jay’s eyes lock on his again. 

“Well, that sucks,” Jay says. He gives Mike a little smile, shrugs. “‘Cause I want you to.”

“Like I’m gonna destroy the one thing I can’t live without.”

Mike didn’t mean to get so serious just now. He moves down to help Jay out of his pants, for the excuse to break eye contact, and flings Jay’s shoes off in the process of stripping his pants over his ankles. He leans up over Jay on all fours while Jay pulls off his socks. He’s looking up at Mike with a kind of fearless wonder, eyes shining. 

“I don’t mean destroy _me_ ,” Jay says, reaching up to rub his hands over Mike’s shoulders. “But don’t let me stay like this. I’m sick of it. Break me in, maybe that’s, uh. A better way to put it. Like, um. You know in horror movies when there’s only one girl who survives, and it’s ‘cause she was the innocent one or whatever, but by the end of the movie she’s covered in blood and holding a machete and just like screaming and insane and whacking the bad guy to pieces? Like, she’s changed? That’s how I want to be, so. Do it.”

“Am I the bad guy in this scenario?” Mike asks, confused, also glad he hasn’t had anything to drink tonight, because Jay’s weirdness is near-impossible to parse even while sober.

“Yeah,” Jay says, giving Mike a wide, psycho-killer grin, eyes bright. “Fuck me up like you’re the bad guy and I couldn’t run fast enough to get away. Mike, yeah. That’s. What I want. Okay?”

“I was thinking I’d suck your dick?”

Jay laughs hard and yanks Mike down against him, nodding. He rolls onto his side, hooks his leg around Mike’s hip and humps him a little, kisses him on the mouth.

“That’s good, too,” Jay says, squeezing him. 

“I love that I never know what the fuck you’re going to say,” Mike says, though he’s definitely hated this in the past, too. He kisses Jay and reaches down to push his hand in past the waistband of Jay’s boxers, cups it around one bare ass cheek. Jay gasps and humps him a little harder, nodding. 

Mike thinks, if Jay wasn’t afraid of ruining this magic moment, he might respond: And I love that I always fucking know what you’ll say, Mike.

But maybe that’s not true. Jay has definitely looked shocked by things that have come out of Mike’s mouth, a time or two.

When Mike pulls back a little to ease Jay’s boxers down, Jay’s hand goes to Mike’s chest. He looks mesmerized by it, running his hand around with his lips parted, eyes glazed. 

“These coming off, or--?” Mike asks, tugging on Jay’s boxers and wondering if he really should adopt some kind of slasher villain attitude. He doesn’t want to, though he also doesn’t want to be too soft and sincere. Jay will freak out if Mike makes this feel too, what? Real?

“Wha--?” Jay looks up from squeezing Mike’s chest and turns to look over his shoulder as Mike pulls his boxers down in back, the upper curve of Jay’s perfect little ass already exposed. “Oh, yeah. Um. Here.” 

Jay scrambles free from Mike’s grip and rolls onto his back again, arching so he can get the boxers off. He kicks them away and then looks kind of stunned when he sees his own nakedness, as if he’d forgotten that removing his last remaining article of clothing would leave him totally exposed in view of Mike. His thighs twitch together and his hands slide downward, but he doesn’t actually try to cover his dick, which is wet with precome and about what Mike expected, size-wise, though fatter, maybe: thick, fucking mouthwatering. Mike licks his lips when Jay gives him a bashful look. 

“Have you done this?” Jay asks, whispering again for some reason.

“What-- Sucking dick?”

“Uh, yeah, well. Anything, with a guy?”

“Yeah. A couple times.”

Jay looks heartbroken. Mike moans and shakes his head, kisses him. 

“I should have-- I wish--” Mike says, whispering this against Jay’s mouth. 

“I’m glad you didn’t wait for me,” Jay says, eyes flashing when he pulls back. “So don’t give me that shit.”

“What? Um--” 

Mike wonders if he should clarify now that Jay is definitely, obviously a virgin, that he maybe hadn’t even kissed anyone before today, before Mike? It’s understandable for someone who didn’t come out until he was thirty-two years old to still be a virgin at thirty-three. 

“Just show me you know what you’re doing,” Jay says, eyes still hard. He swallows and slides his hand down over Mike’s belly, to the waistband of his boxers. “And show me-- This, please? Fuck, I can feel how big you are. I could tell, even in the pool yesterday.” 

“Yeah?” Mike grins, all his angst evaporating into this infusion of adolescent-level glee, because yep, he has a really big dick, and he’s been hoping for the past decade or so that Jay is into big dicks.

He gets up onto his knees again and strips off his boxers with graceless urgency, trying not to think about how long it’s been since he was fully naked in front of another person. Most of his hookups are half-dressed and quick. When he’s out of the boxers and Jay’s eyes are raking over him, he feels stupid, but only for the half a second it takes for him to realize that Jay is staring at his dick in seeming awe.

“Holy fucking shit,” Jay says, and he looks a little scared when he meets Mike’s eyes again. 

Perhaps he’s less enthusiastic about being destroyed now that he’s encountered the potential instrument of said destruction.

“Um,” Mike says, looking down at himself then back up into Jay’s face. “Don’t worry, like. I’m not trying to fuck you right away.” 

“I’m not worried,” Jay says, frowning a little and dropping flat onto his back again. 

“You will be,” Mike says. He crawls onto Jay and prays this will be at least a little bit funny to him. “You-- Will be.” 

“Don’t do a fucking Yoda voice at me in bed, oh my god.”

Jay is laughing, though, and he’s still grinning when Mike leans in to kiss him. They gasp into each other’s mouths when Mike’s dick drags across Jay’s hip, up to his belly, and slides in close to Jay’s, which is pressed to Mike’s gut. Jay makes a squeaky noise and throws his arms around Mike’s neck to keep him in place, eyes closed and mouth open when he starts to move his hips in uncertain, needy little twitches that are probably involuntary.

“You want my mouth on you?” Mike asks, murmuring this near Jay’s ear. 

“Mhmm, I-- Yeah.” Jay wrenches his eyes open and exhales through his nose, searching Mike’s eyes for something. His face is burning, arms still tight around Mike’s neck. “I’ll, uhh. Probably not last too long.” 

“That’s okay. Just want to make you feel good.” Mike licks across Jay’s puffy lips again, sealing this with a kiss. “Want to make you come.” 

Jay whines and nods, easing his grip on Mike as if to give him permission to relocate.

Mike spends some time sucking at Jay’s neck on the way there, until Jay makes a soft noise and pushes him away, shaking his head.

“Don’t leave any marks,” Jay says, whispering again. “The-- Wedding, tomorrow.”

“Ah, of course.” Mike legitimately forgot that’s happening, barely knows where he is right now despite being sober after sundown for the first time in, what? Years? “You don’t want everybody to see?” Mike says, dragging his fingers through Jay’s hair, which is still damp from the rain. “Hmm? Don’t want to show a little more evidence that you’re with me?”

“No,” Jay says, but his eyes are swimmy like he’s thinking about what it would be like to go around in public with visible marks that Mike left on his skin, so that people would know he’s been to the end of the horror movie that is vulnerability, intimacy, whatever he’s been afraid of, and survived.

“How about at home?” Mike asks, dragging his dick close to Jay’s as he asks, just short of rubbing them together. “Would you let me manhandle you once this is all done?” This question is way too big for right now and Mike shouldn’t have risked ruining the moment, but he can’t take it back now. He smirks like everything’s well in hand and strokes Jay’s hair again. “Might be worth it, if you like the way it feels. If you find out you like it rough.”

Jay whimpers like he already knows he does, and Mike can’t help it: he backtracks and moves up to kiss Jay on the mouth again. 

“Don’t give me a bruise there either,” Jay says when Mike finally pulls free to breathe. Jay touches his fattened lips and doesn’t answer Mike’s questions about what may or may not happen between them once they’re back home, in the real world. 

“How about here?” Mike asks, moving down to frame Jay’s ribs with his hands. Jay is so fucking tiny, his whole ribcage fits in Mike’s hands, and Mike could swear Jay is thinking this, too, and liking it, when their eyes meet again. 

“There?” Jay says, either sincerely confused or being coy. 

“Here,” Mike says, moving his mouth down to the flat of Jay’s belly, where there’s really not enough flab left to suck any into his mouth until a bruise starts. Mike is just teasing, anyway, giving Jay hot little licks and staring up at him. “Or!” he says, having an even better idea. “Here,” he says, sinking lower and pushing Jay’s thighs apart a little wider, his thumbs stroking over the soft, hairless skin high on the insides of both.

Jay twitches in Mike’s grip and licks over his lips. He’s breathing hard, eyelids heavy. 

“I could give you a little bruise right-- Here.” Mike licks a spot on the inside of Jay’s left thigh, where he’s warm and shaky. “Hmm?” Mike says. He licks there again, then gives Jay a soft bite that makes him gasp. “That way it could stay secret.”

“Mike,” Jay says, touching his flushed throat, Mike’s hair, the wet spot on his belly that Mike’s tongue left behind. “I need, ah, I think, just--”

“Oh, you just want me to go ahead and suck your cock? Well, fair enough.” 

Mike watches Jay’s face as he moves up to press his tongue out, just teasing the tip softly over Jay’s cockhead, just to see what happens.

Jay cries out and slams his hips upward, possibly almost breaking Mike’s nose with his dick. 

“Whoa, dude,” Mike says, holding Jay’s hips against the bed for his own safety while his cock leaks onto the sheets for how hot that was. “You nearly took my eye out, careful.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Jay puts his hands over his face and groans into them, shakes his head. When he pulls his hands away and meets Mike’s eyes, Mike is sure Jay is going to fess up: _hey, uh, I’ve never done this, have never done anything, please show me_ \--

“Want more?” Mike asks when Jay says nothing and starts to look panicked about the fact that Mike isn’t sucking his dick yet. Jay is dribbling precome, thighs twitching nonstop in Mike’s hands, and he’s going to come the second Mike has his mouth around him, probably.

“Please,” Jay says, voice breaking. “Mike.”

The way he says Mike’s name: has he _always_ said it like that? Like he’s begging? 

“Mmkay, Jay, just. Here, I’ll hold you still.” Mikes squeezes Jay’s thighs and puts more of his weight into holding them down as he moves his mouth toward Jay’s dick again. “That okay?” he asks, pressing on Jay’s thighs to indicate what he’s talking about. “Okay if I hold you in place, if I help you be good?”

“ _Unnnn_ h,” Jay says, throwing his head back. He’s nodding, too, so Mike continues.

Jay tastes good, clean and salty all at once, and the width of him fills Mike’s mouth perfectly while his more modest length allows Mike to suck him in almost all the way to the base. Mike is still kind of confounded by the fact that sucking dick isn’t just some awful chore but kind of great, though really only when the person whose dick is being sucked makes noises like the ones Jay is making now, like they’re surrendering for how good it feels, saying: _you win, you win, you can have me_. Mike moans around Jay’s cock when he imagines how amazing it would feel, even better, if Jay was making those noises while rocking his fucked-open ass back onto Mike’s dick, bent over, totally gone for him, completely his.

“Mike--” Jay says, grabbing for Mike’s head with both hands in a way that’s both like a warning that he’s about to come and a command to not stop. Mike presses his fingers in tight around Jay’s spread open thighs and holds him in place when he comes with a broken cry, the way Jay’s cock jumps against his tongue making Mike want to moan in a way that he can’t right now, because he’s too busy swallowing around Jay until he’s whimpering, emptied out.

Jay holds Mike in place, too, which makes him want to laugh, but he can’t really do so at present. He sucks Jay to the point of overstimulation in mild revenge, and is surprised when Jay doesn’t sob and push him off. He’s more like _still_ holding Mike on him, though it’s got to be getting painful to stay in Mike’s mouth after coming. 

Mike pulls back, licking his way up Jay’s oversensitive cock on the way, and looks up at him, expecting thanks for finally releasing him. 

“Keep going,” Jay says instead, eyes hooded and dark when he looks down over his heaving chest at Mike, flushed from his cheeks down past his collarbone. 

“Wh-- What?”

“I, can-- If you-- Please, I can-- Again, please.”

Mike makes a face, confused. He licks at Jay’s dick and listens to the way he hisses, sees the way he grits his teeth like it must hurt in the way Mike knows it does, being touched at all just after coming.

“Jay, uh, it’s not--”

“Fucking-- _Please_ , please, this is how, I, ah. Please?”

Jay looks at Mike like he’s desperate to have Mike’s mouth on him-- To come again? Is it even possible? What guy has multiple orgasms? 

For the sake of science, Mike gives him another wide, firm lick, from the base of his shaft up to the head. 

Jay groans and arches his back like he both can’t bear it and wants more, lifting his hips to press his cock up toward Mike’s mouth, begging.

“Jesus,” Mike says, whispering, and he takes Jay’s cockhead into his mouth, listens to Jay’s noises change and get more ragged, raw, watches him dig his palms in against his eyes and bare his teeth as Mike takes him back into his mouth. Jay is still hard, throbbing on Mike’s tongue. His thighs are tense around Mike’s ears.

Jay’s cock twitches in Mike’s mouth, and Mike wonders if he should pull off, if Jay even knows what the fuck he’s doing, and then Jay puts his hands on Mike’s head again, fingers shaking now, and Mike knows: keep going, yes. He feels like Jay is in his brain somewhere, gnawing on it zombie-like while telling him what to do, controlling him. Mike moans at the thought and deep throats him, his mouth soaked for it now. Jay makes a sound like he’s trying to growl and cry at the same time, straining against Mike’s vice grip on his hips like he wants to fuck Mike’s face. 

When Jay comes a second time it’s just a weak little spurt, in terms of what ends up in Mike’s mouth, and the sounds he makes are even weaker, little choked off cries of relief and maybe gratitude. He’s soaked in sweat, shaking all over. He hisses and curls in on himself when Mike licks the wet slit of his dick as he pulls off, almost hopefully. Jay pulls his knees together, warding Mike away from trying to make him come a third time. 

“Holy fucking shit,” Mike says, not realizing until he’s heard himself say this that it’s the same thing Jay said when he first laid eyes on Mike’s unleashed cock.

Jay is such a wreck that Mike almost gets why he’s so shy about sex: now that he’s given himself over to it he’s spilled across the bed like a cracked-open egg that’s oozing everywhere, looking braindead when Mike crawls up to meet his eyes. He’s pliant, Mike realizes, surging in for a kiss. That’s the word for it. Malleable, pliant, soft, all his. 

“Nn, no,” Jay says, turning his cheek just before Mike can connect with his mouth. “Don’t wanna taste myself.”

“It’s just your dick,” Mike says, thinking of what else he might get his mouth on that Jay wouldn’t want to taste. “Have you tried it, uh. Have you kissed someone after they swallowed your come before?”

“No one’s ever swallowed my come before,” Jay says, so bashful when he admits this that he’s almost whispering. Mike can feel how hot Jay’s face is without even touching his cheek, close as they are.

“Try it,” Mike says, his mouth hovering just over Jay’s. “It doesn’t taste like come, not really. That went right down my throat.” He laughs a little, genuinely impressed by Jay’s ability to stack his orgasms. “Both times.”

Jay moans, staring at Mike’s lips and licking over his own. 

“It just tastes maybe, a little, like your cock.” Mike darts his tongue out to lick against Jay’s when he worries it over his own bottom lip again. Jay gasps, and his eyes get big when they flick up to Mike’s: not just big but full of something that Mike wants to eat with a spoon, like surrender that’s verging on actual trust, imagine that. “It’s cool, you’ll see,” Mike says, already brushing his lips against Jay’s. “It’ll taste like you marked your territory, you know? Like I’m yours now.”

Jay parts his lips, giving permission, and they kiss hotly, open-mouthed. Mike moans into it, feeling like he could spend hours just teaching Jay what his dick tastes like on someone else’s tongue, on Mike’s, though he’s also really fucking hard and needs to come soon, is starting to ache for it. He can’t stop kissing Jay, though, not yet, because Jay keeps pushing his tongue out to meet every slow lick Mike gives him, hungry for it, until they’re both huffing their breath.

“That was fucking amazing, by the way,” Mike says when it seems like Jay is at least somewhat capable of rational thought, his hand wrapped around the back of Mike’s neck like he doesn’t want to stop kissing either. “Do you-- Is that, like. Your thing? Coming twice?”

“I dunno.” Jay shrugs and looks down at his chest, then back up at Mike. “It’s, just. What I like.”

“Well, I fucking love it,” Mike blurts, instantly feeling like an idiot. 

Jay grins and pets the back of Mike’s neck. Mike opens his mouth to make some crazy, redundant love confession, and fortunately Jay speaks before he can.

“Want me, um. To do you?” 

Jay bites his bottom lip after asking. If Mike hadn’t known him for fifteen years he would be sure that Jay was some kind of evil spy who had spent his whole life perfecting the art of seducing Mike, because holy hell what the fuck.

“Whatever you want, man,” Mike says. He doesn’t know how many more ways he can tell Jay that he’s at his mercy. He’s been telling Jay that since 2003, when he laid himself at Jay’s feet because he couldn’t live without him. 

And that was back when they just thought of each other as friends. Now Mike is truly fucked, and he doesn’t even care. He wants to pile everything he has into Jay’s hands, as soon as possible. That’s where it all belongs, feels like.

“I’m gonna be bad at it,” Jay says, sitting up on his elbows. Doing so brings his face closer to Mike’s, and Mike hangs back to see if Jay will kiss him. He looks like he wants to, his gaze sinking to Mike’s mouth. Then he looks up into Mike’s eyes again and shrugs. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Mike says. “I mean. I can teach you, uh. A thing or two.”

Jay snorts like he’s not so sure about that, as if Mike didn’t just suck him off expertly. Twice!

“I’m pretty much ready to explode, so anything you do is going to be amazing,” Mike says, not sure if he should flop onto his back or what. Jay is curled up against him like he wants to hide under Mike’s body. “And you can keep that as a general rule,” Mike says when Jay meets his gaze again. “Anything, anything you-- You’re my fetish, like I explained. Put an octopus on my face, or don’t. I’ll be into it either way.” 

Jay’s smile comes slowly, and he’s flushing again when he nudges Mike over so that he’s lying on his side, then his back. Jay’s hand goes right to Mike’s chest, and he stares while he rubs Mike there idly, seems to be addicted to doing so already.

“Why am I your fetish?” Jay asks. 

“You tell me. You’re the little devil who forked my soul right out of me when I wasn’t looking. I don’t know how that old world magic works.”

“You would blame it on magic, Mike. You would.”

“Brilliant observation, considering I just did. Hey, um--” Mike strokes his hand down over Jay’s back, tucks it around his waist. “We don’t have to do this right now, if you--”

“I want to! Shh, I’m doing it.”

“Okay, okay. I thought maybe you were stalling.”

Jay groans and looks down at Mike’s cock, licks his lips. 

“I don’t like not being good at things right away,” he confesses, still staring. “Not if somebody’s watching. Especially you.”

“You could do it under the bedsheet,” Mike says, joking.

“Yeah!” Jay says, turning to Mike, eyes bright. He’s serious. “That’s perfect, good idea.”

“Oh, um. Okay.”

Mike tells himself this is the first of many Jay-given blow jobs in his future, and that he’ll be able to watch the future ones, eventually. He’s still a little sad that he won’t be able to see this first one, because Jay is crawling under the sheet and pulling it over his head until he’s totally hidden from view.

“Oh god,” Jay says once he’s under there like a kid wearing a sheet as a ghost costume on Halloween, kneeling between Mike’s legs when they spread around him. “Has anyone ever gotten this whole thing in their mouth?”

“This whole _thing_?” Mike snorts and taps his knee against Jay’s side under the sheet. “I knew you’d be super romantic in bed, Jay. Just knew it.”

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Can you even see?”

“Yeah, a little.” The sheet is thin enough to allow some of the glow through the high, narrow windows shine through, Mike supposes. “It’s probably best that I can’t see that clearly,” Jay says, sounding so studious or something that Mike isn’t sure if he wants to laugh or cry, his throbbing dick so close to Jay’s mouth, also close to going off already. “This is an advanced level cock you’ve got here,” Jay says, maybe sensing Mike’s impending laughter and trying to get him to break. 

Mike is going to make a joke, but it dies on his tongue because Jay’s hand is wrapping around him, his fingers clenching at the base of Mike’s dick, and oh holy god it’s happening, every dearest dream of Mike’s is finally coming true.

“Mmph,” Jay says, breathing against the head of Mike’s cock. Then his tongue is teasing against it, uncertain and soft, flicking there in experimental little licks. Jay starts to breathe harder, and when he moves down along the shaft he licks at Mike more hungrily, presumably less nervous about getting precome in his prim little mouth.

Mike doesn’t care anymore that he can’t see. He’s gone just for knowing it’s Jay under there, and actually somehow Jay’s weirdness is making this even hotter, better. Mike throws his head back and grips the fitted mattress sheet with both hands, pulling it free from at least one corner. He’s gritting his teeth and doing everything he can not jam his hips upward, trying to keep still while Jay kitten-licks him to death.

Because of course Jay performs oral sex like some kind of evil imp, moving his tongue here and there in a random fashion, almost giving enough pressure and then moving to another spot, almost lingering there long enough and then moving again, like he’s mapping the surface of Mike’s dick with a tongue-based data collection system. And Mike can’t do anything but chew the insides of his cheeks and fight the urge to tell Jay how to do this better, because Jay might pout or freak out and run away, apparently so sensitive about not instantly being amazing at sex that he just straight up never had any.

Which is fucking classic, really, typical Jay.

“Am I chafing you?” Jay asks, still holding Mike by the base of his cock when he asks this, mouth close and warm. 

“Chah-- What?”

“The, uh, mustache.”

“No, fuck, feels good, keep going, you-- You’re doing really good, Jay, good work.”

Jay snorts, but his mouth is wetter when he returns to his infuriatingly almost-enough licking, as if he liked that compliment a lot.

“Just-- One thing, though,” Mike says when he can’t hold it in any longer-- In either sense, because he so fucking urgently needs to come. “Um, most people, like, eventually put it in their mouth?”

He snorts when he hears what he’s said, and that it sounds like he’s saying most people he meets eventually end up with his cock in their mouths.

“I know that.” Jay pokes his head out from under the sheet to glare at Mike for that comment. Mike gives Jay a look that begs him to be merciful. “I’ve seen porn,” Jay says, reaching up to stroke Mike’s chest as if for comfort, or good luck. 

“Oh. Of course you have.” 

“This is the way I want to do it, okay? At least for now. So. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take, take it, it’s so good, just-- Fuck, I’m sorry, I really need to come.” 

Jay considers this, the sheet draped around his shoulders like a cape. He looks especially cute with his hair all messed up and half-dried, and his skin is glowy from the sun he got during the day, warm-looking against the sterile white of the sheet. _Lovable_ is the word Mike would use for how Jay looks, even objectively, though he can’t be objective. He whines under his breath when he thinks about fucking Jay, how he’d look spread out on his back underneath Mike while taking his cock, how Mike would hold him together with both hands, so carefully, even while slamming into him and opening him up.

“Okay,” Jay says, and he moves up to stretch out against Mike’s side, letting the sheet ship down to their waists. “You can come, if you need to.”

“Oh-- So. I’m gonna-- You’re gonna watch--?”

“Uh-huh. Did you think I was going to swallow your come? I don’t even like my own come. Thanks for swallowing it, by the way. That was ideal. I hate cleaning it up.” 

Mike gives Jay a long look, waiting for him to laugh or something. Jay just looks calm, also sincere, then concerned about Mike’s silence.

“Sorry,” Jay says, eyes lowering.

Mike shakes his head hard, slaps the sheet out of the way and grabs his dick.

“Here,” he says, tucking his arm around Jay while he jacks himself, watching as Jay’s eyes trail down and widen for the sight of Mike pumping his dick, desperate and fast. “You did-- _Ah_ , so good, you’re perfect, it’s good, you’re good, just--”

“God,” Jay says, licking his lips. “I bet, you. Do you, um. Is there a lot, when you--”

“You might want to get, _nnh_ , ah-- Out, out of range--” 

But there’s no going back now: Mike arches off the bed, buries his face against Jay’s shoulder and opens his mouth against Jay’s skin when he comes, feels like he’ll die for how good it is to unload while pressed up against the scent of Jay’s post-sex body and with the taste of Jay still in his mouth. It’s enough, and he comes so hard, dizzily hoping he didn’t hit Jay with any of it once he resumes brain function. He’s still pressed against Jay, so maybe that’s a good sign, that he didn’t run away in fear or whatever.

Jay makes a hiccuping noise, and only then does Mike register that Jay is hard again, incredibly so, and rubbing his cock against Mike’s thigh, looking like he’s close when Mike peers over at him, in awe. 

“Sah, sorry,” Jay says, struggling to meet Mike’s gaze, and when did he get so gone? It’s happening again? How long did Mike’s orgasm last? “I can, I can stop--”

“Don’t you fucking stop,” Mike says, forcefully. He makes a mental note that Jay must get off on being given harsh commands in bed, because he does that pained little hiccup thing again and his cock pulses against Mike’s leg, spurting almost dry as he comes for a third time, just a tiny spittle of release hitting Mike’s skin while Jay pumps himself completely empty. 

Jay goes limp with a whimper that makes Mike desperate to hold him. He doesn’t anticipate this being an issue, so it’s a real gut punch when Jay moves away, his hand shooting out to brace against Mike’s chest and keep him back.

“Don’t--” Jay says, eyes still hooded even as he scoots away from Mike. “Ah, you’ll-- Sorry, just. Don’t get it on me.”

Mike looks down at himself and remembers that his entire chest is splattered with come. Oh. Right.

“I, um.” Mike’s head is spinning. Jay looks so broken-up and exhausted, like he has a medical-grade condition that requires Mike’s arms around him. “I’ll take a shower?” Mike says, sort of feeling like he’ll cry.

Jay nods and doesn’t say anything.

Mike goes into the bathroom in a daze and closes the door behind him without thinking. Should he have left it open? Invited Jay to join him? He’s no longer sure what’s happening and cleans himself off as quickly as he can, then checks himself for any remaining residue when he’s drying off, afraid Jay will jump out the window or something if a stray molecule of come makes contact with his skin.

This is what it’s like to fuck a supernatural being, Mike assumes. Lots of rules and drama, don’t get them wet or feed them after midnight. 

He half expects Jay to be gone when he returns to the bedroom, but he’s there, dressed in boxers and a t-shirt and lying atop the neatened sheets. He’s turned on the lamp that sits on the table by his side of the bed.

“Did you make the bed?” Mike asks, unable to resist the urge to tease him for this, as he’s feeling a little raw and mocked himself.

“No,” Jay says. “Just, um. I thought we could, like. Watch a movie?”

“Jay, goddammit.”

“What?” he says, sharply, like he’s ready for a fight. “Jesus, I tried to tell you, and you thought it wouldn’t bother you, but that’s never the way it works, and I’m fucking sorry, okay, I know I’m--”

“You’re fine, but are you going to make me ask for it while I stand here in a towel? Like, do we need to negotiate terms?” 

“Ask for what?” Jay’s eyes are still hard, walls going up to hide what Mike supposes is some kind of primal terror. He still can’t figure out what Jay is afraid of, and knows Jay well enough to understand that asking outright would get him nowhere and set them back about fifty steps in the process of maybe finally having this thing they’ve both been homesick for since they met. “I thought you weren’t going to try to fuck me,” Jay says, softening a little, shoulders flinching. “I mean, not. Right away.”

“Of course I’m not! You think that’s what I’m asking for right now? I’m-- Can I-- I want to, like. Cuddle, you fucker! Okay?”

“Oh.” Jay grins. He looks like he thinks he’s won this round, and Mike waits to be told that Jay feels the same way about cuddling that he does about come. “C’mere,” Jay says instead, patting the bed. “But can you get dressed first?” he adds when Mike steps toward the bed.

“Sure.” Mike goes to his suitcase and puts on a pair of boxers, wondering if Jay is watching from the bed as his bare ass disappears into them. 

“Not that,” Jay says when Mike reaches for a t-shirt.

Mike turns to smirk at him. Jay sniffs and shrugs one shoulder. He’s blushing when Mike reaches the bed. 

“Scoot over,” Mike says, getting in on Jay’s side. Will this be his side of the bed when they return to Milwaukee? Will they find some reason to pretend none of this happened as soon as they set foot on U.S. soil again? Mike can’t think about it right now, feels like he’s dangling off a ledge and needs to hold on to Jay for dear life.

Jay snickers like a little brat when Mike spoons up behind him. Mike knows it’s because he’s nervous and forgives him. He holds Jay tight against him and presses his grin to Jay’s shoulder when he feels Jay squirming back into it and seeming to revel in the feeling of Mike’s bare chest against the back of his thin t-shirt. Mike thought he would like that, thinks he would like it even more if he took his own shirt off. For now he doesn’t push it, just holds Jay against him and angles him so he can see the TV, just in case he actually wants to watch a movie. 

Jay’s phone is on the bed, and when he gropes for it Mike is more than a little insulted, but Jay is just using it to cast a movie from his video library onto the room’s TV. Jay set everything up for casting the day they arrived; he does this obsessively in hotel rooms, too. Mike is exhausted by him, by all his little quirks and obsessions, demands, so it makes no sense that he also wants to drink them all down and roll around in them, to never be away from them.

“This okay?” Mike asks, voice muffled against Jay’s shoulder. 

“Mhm-hmm.” Jay wiggles back against him, his breath hitching when he feels the shape of Mike’s cock through his boxers, soft for now but also pressed to Jay’s ass, right where Mike wants it. 

“You sure?” Mike asks, willing to adjust positions. 

“Yes, god, now be quiet.”

Because the movie is starting.

It’s _Die Hard_ , for some reason. Mike doesn’t care. He gives Jay’s neck an experimental lick. Jay sighs and tilts his head to offer better access. He makes a soft, approving noise under his breath when Mike licks him again. Jay was a little tense when Mike first pressed against him, but he’s boneless and sweet now that Mike is licking him, his cheek resting on Mike’s bicep. 

Mike starts to fall asleep about ten minutes into the movie, wrung out and buzzing all over like he showered in sunlight, his skin tingling for the feeling of Jay in his arms and also for the smell of him, which is so perfect that Mike wants to beg him not to shower: sunscreen, hair product, sex sweat, rain. Mike tries to stay awake, to keep licking Jay’s neck and listening to him sigh like he’s wistfully considering a fourth orgasm this evening, but finally he’s too tired to continue and falls asleep with his face pressed to the back of Jay’s neck, probably drooling.

At some point during the night Jay wakes Mike slightly by adjusting against him. The movie and the lights are off, and Jay has pulled the bedsheet up over them. He’s also taken off his shirt, and when he settles in again he buries his face against Mike’s bare chest and grunts under his breath like a satisfied little animal, or maybe Mike dreams that part, already asleep again.

Mike has one disturbing dream that Jay reaches into his chest and wraps his hand around Mike’s heart, holding it just a little too tightly while it beats against his palm. In the dream Jay sleeps with a smile on his face, content in the feeling of having Mike entirely in his hand, under his control, one wrong move and _squeeze_.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Mike wakes up that dream feels far away and stupid. The real Jay hasn’t reached into his chest. At least not literally. He’s curled up there with his arms tucked between his chest and Mike’s, sleeping deeply at dawn. Mike kisses the top of Jay’s head and waits for sleep to take him under again, but suddenly he’s wide awake. 

Maybe that dream did bother him, a little. He puts two fingers against Jay’s throat and feels for his pulse. It pumps calm and steady against Mike’s fingertips, confirmation that there is a heart in there. Mike will probably always need the occasional reminder. 

It’s ridiculous, because Mike has seen how fragile Jay can be, how he fights what he feels like he’d rather die than surrender to it. Mike vows to be gentle with him, even if Jay puts up walls again and starts shooting arrows at Mike from overtop them, like that one time. He vows not to laugh or make exaggerated faces of confusion, at least not on purpose. He also thinks it’s probably wise not to talk about any really heavy shit until they’re back home. He doesn’t want to ruin things between them while they’re still here, in this carefully manufactured paradise. He doesn’t even want to believe it can be ruined. They’ve waited so long, and Jay fits just right, just like Mike knew he would, snug in Mike’s arms like a happy ending. 

There’s no turning back from how far they’ve already gone, Mike tells himself.

And then, desperately: right??

As if he’s the one who can answer that question.

By the time Jay wakes up Mike is a wreck, faking sleep and pretending to wake at the same time as Jay, fearing a sea change at daybreak. It’s overcast outside, clouds visible through the narrow windows along the ceiling that look out only on the sky, the bigger windows below those all shuttered behind heavy wooden blinds.

“Looks like it might rain,” Mike says when Jay peers up at him.

Opening with a comment about the weather, fantastic. He’s never felt this nervous on a second date, or whatever the fuck this day counts as. His morning wood has sunk, at least.

“Oh no,” Jay says, rubbing at his eyes. He yawns and looks back over his shoulder at the windows. He seems calm, and looks sweet when he blinks up at Mike again, resting his head on the pillow they’re sharing. “Well. Lizzie has a contingency plan. For rain.”

“That’s smart.” 

They stare at each other for a second, and when Jay starts laughing, Mike does, too. 

Mike scoots over to kiss him, moaning for how hot Jay’s mouth is, first thing in the morning and unguarded. He expects Jay to pull back and tell him to brush his teeth, but Jay opens for Mike’s tongue and sighs with what sounds like relief, sliding both his hands up over Mike’s chest. 

They’re still kissing lazily and pawing at each other when they hear swift footsteps on the stairs. Jay curses and sits up, groping for his t-shirt. 

“Jay?” It’s Lizzie, right outside the door. Mike checks the clock by the bed and startles when he sees it’s almost eleven o’clock in the morning somehow. They’ll have to go to the ceremony site and start setting up soon.

“What’s wrong?” Jay asks when he’s pulled his t-shirt back on. Mike gets up to find one for himself, has the feeling she’s going to be invited inside. 

“Nothing, um. Can I come in? Are you guys dressed?”

“Uh, sort of.”

Jay glances at Mike, who shrugs and goes into the bathroom for a piss, bringing a t-shirt and a pair of shorts with him so he can be more dressed when he emerges. 

Mike runs the bathroom sink on blast so his leak-taking won’t be audible through the door. That would be rude, also embarrassing. He can hear the low murmur of Jay and Lizzie talking after he’s washed his hands and shut off the water, and he gives himself an appraisal in the mirror, looking for any incriminating marks on his neck, though Jay didn’t kiss him there. He needs to shave, and wishes that the wedding wasn’t happening today. He’s tired, and wants at least another twenty-four hours to stay huddled up in bed with Jay.

Lizzie is sitting on the end of the bed when Mike emerges from the bathroom, and he feels himself flushing, because isn’t there something obscene about letting her sit there, on the site of Mike’s partial deflowering of Jay?

“Hey, Mike,” Lizzie says. She’s had her hair done and it’s spilled around her shoulders in perfect waves, but she’s still dressed in jean shorts and an old t-shirt, no makeup yet. She doesn’t really need it, looks glowy anyway, and calm, despite the threatening clouds outside.

Jay is sitting cross-legged with the blankets over his lap, pillows propped behind him while they chat. 

“I just needed to see my brother,” Lizzie says. “Sorry.”

“Everything okay?” Mike asks. He’s not sure where he should sit, so just stands awkwardly near the bathroom door. 

“Oh, yeah,” she says. “Just, ah.” She laughs and looks at Jay. “I was just remembering when we were kids and we made a vow to never get married.”

“We were very serious about it,” Jay says, nodding. “We weren’t going to marry or have kids or any of that, and we were going to live in a big house together in California.”

“Jay was going to make movies, and I was going to act in them,” Lizzie says, stretching her arms across the bed like she wants to grab Jay’s hands. He scoots closer so she can reach. 

“There’s still time!” Mike says, probably a tasteless joke.

Lizzie laughs, and Mike feels like he just won a fucking prize. She has literally never laughed at any of his jokes. Jay is just smiling, looking fondly at his sister, then at Mike.

“No, Rich is perfect,” Lizzie says. “Isn’t that weird? How you meet someone and you’re like, okay, whatever, you’re just some random person. And then they become everything to you.” 

“Ugh,” Jay says. “Yes.” 

Which means what, Mike wonders? That Jay has someone who is everything to him? Probably Mike? 

“What did you think when you first met Jay?” Lizzie asks, turning to Mike. 

What a question. Jay gives Mike a nervous glance. 

“Hmm,” Mike says, remembering this well. “I thought, gee. I hope this little dork thinks I’m cool. Hope he won’t figure out I’m actually an even bigger dork than him. At least not right away.”

“Aww!” Lizzie says. “That sounds about right.”

Jay just snickers, blushing. 

“And did you?” Lizzie asks, shaking Jay’s hands in hers. 

“Think he was cool?” Jay asks. “Or figure out he was a bigger dork than me?”

“I don’t know, both!” 

“Uhh, well.” Jay gives Mike a look. “Yes and yes. The latter took me a while.”

“But then you only liked me more,” Mike says, giving him a hammy wink. 

“I can’t believe I thought you guys were playing a prank on me,” Lizzie says. 

“When?” Jay asks. 

“When you got here and told me you were together! I dunno, I guess I thought if it was ever going to happen it would have already, years ago. And I thought Jay would have told me right away and not waited five months! Though actually, who am I kidding. Jay probably won’t even tell us when you two get married.” She looks at Mike and grins. “He’ll just make you sneak away with him to elope.”

“You’re the second person to have that theory,” Mike says, not sure how to otherwise respond. 

“Joke’s on you,” Jay says to Lizzie when she turns back to him. “It already happened.”

“What!” Lizzie jumps up onto her knees and grabs her perfect hair.

Mike looks at Jay with confusion, half ready to believe this himself.

“I’m not serious,” Jay says, laughing at the look on Lizzie’s face. “Jesus, you really fell for that?”

Lizzie grabs a pillow and whacks Jay with it several times, and soon afterward departs to have her makeup done. Mike goes into the bathroom to shave, and is surprised when Jay follows him in, undresses and gets in the shower.

“This is so couple-y,” Mike says, and as soon as it’s out he wishes he hadn’t said it. Because, are they still pretending? Or is this real now? For good?

“Yeah,” Jay says. He’s still in the shower, so Mike can’t see what kind of expression he has on his face. “So, I was thinking for the pre-ceremony stuff I’ll shoot Lizzie and the bridesmaids and you do Rich getting ready, okay?”

“Sure.” 

Mike stares at himself in the mirror, drawing the razor down over the last strip of shaving cream on his face and trying not to be disappointed. Of course Jay doesn’t want to talk about the fact that they might be a couple now, for real. Doesn’t mean they’re not one, though.

They dress for the wedding and gather their stuff for the biggest and most important part of the shoot. Mike is glad for the distraction by the time he’s taking footage of Rich doing his tie in front of a mirror at the event hall, which is on the beach and decked out for the occasion, tropical flower arrangements all over the place. It hasn’t started raining yet, but there’s little doubt that it will, the wind picking up outside. 

“This is kind of awkward, isn’t it?” Rich says, when Mike is filming him looking contemplatively out the window, at the clouds that haven’t blown away. 

“What?” Mike asks, realizing that Rich is talking to him when he checks over his shoulder to see that Jack and Arnold have both left the room. 

“Uh, it’s just the two of us in here, and you’re filming me? You can put that down, if you want.”

“Oh. Sure.” Mike stops recording and shrugs. “Just getting some good coverage of your, uh, final moments as a single man.”

Rich snorts. “It’s awkward because my only groomsman is Jay. I have friends back home, I promise. But nobody I really wanted to fly out to the Caribbean and stand next to me at this, other than Jack, and he’ll be standing, you know, in the middle.”

“I get it,” Mike says. “Jay’s my only real friend.”

“Yeah, that’s how I am with Lizzie. Meanwhile, she has a whole house full of bridesmaids. It’s okay, I love that about her. When she’s out with them I have time to play video games. That sounds sad, but I promise, it isn’t.”

“No, I understand. Jay has a bunch of stupid friends. God, they’re the worst. But I’m glad he can go out and, uh, be with other people, when he’s tired of being holed up with me in the shop.” 

Mike isn’t actually glad about this. Rich grins like he can tell. 

“I’m kind of a solitary person in general,” Rich says. “Which is why I thought I’d never get married. But when you meet someone you can’t live without, all that changes.”

“Sure does.”

“Should you be recording my touching words of wisdom?”

“Oh, crap,” Mike says, lifting the camera like he’s going to, and Rich laughs.

“I’m kidding,” Rich says. “Nobody wants to hear this shit.”

“Don’t know about that,” Mike says, but he doesn’t turn the camera on. “Hey, um. Can I tell you something weird?”

“Suuure,” Rich says, not actually looking too sure about this.

“Uhh, don’t tell Lizzie this, please, but when me and Jay first got here, to the island? We were only pretending to be a couple so that his family wouldn’t give him shit for being a loner or whatever. But he’s not a loner. He has friends, like I said, and he has me, you know, I’m like-- His main person. But we weren’t actually together like that, romantically, until, like. Last night? So. And now I’m not sure what he’s thinking, like, is this gonna be a thing now? A real thing, me and him? Or is he just getting into character? Or trying things with me because he trusts me more than any of his other friends, not because he’s also in love with me and wants to do this for real now? Sorry,” Mike says when he hears how unhinged he’s begun to sound. “I have no fucking clue why I’m telling you this, actually.”

Rich doesn’t look shocked or annoyed. He shrugs, doesn’t even look surprised. 

“That’s kinda what I thought was happening,” he says. 

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, just based on some things Lizzie has told me about Jay, and how he is about-- You.”

Mike’s eyes shoot open. He looks over his shoulder and then moves closer to Rich, desperate to hear more about that. 

“Like what things?” Mike asks. 

“Eh, I don’t know if I should say--”

“Please, man, I’m so fucking messed up on him and he’s, like-- Giving me these awful metaphors about me being Michael Myers and him being the final girl who hacks me to death or something--”

“Whoa,” Rich says, eyebrows lifting. “Okay, I don’t know if I can help you with that part.”

“Yeah, I know, but tell me, please, anything. Unless it’s bad. No, even if it’s bad. I need to know.”

“And you can’t just-- Ask him?”

“You’ve met him! No!”

“Okay, okay, I guess-- Yeah, that tracks with what Lizzie has told me about him. Okay, um.” Rich cranes his neck to check over Mike’s shoulder and make sure they’re still alone together in the room. “Well, first of all,” Rich says, speaking more quietly. “Lizzie thinks he’s been in love with you this whole time. Like, pretty much since he met you.” 

“Holy shit. Why? Jay said that?”

“Oh god no, he didn’t even tell her he’s gay until like, last year.”

“Yeah, he’s-- Yeah. But why-- Why, though, why does she think that?”

“Mhm, she didn’t give me a lot of concrete examples. It’s just the way he’s always talked about you, she said. Like, critical to the point of obsession. I don’t mean he’s saying cruel shit about you to her or anything, but he always ends up dissecting your recent antics when he talks with her about what’s going on in his life. Like, he’ll speculate about your emotions, and goes into great detail about whatever you said to him and what it means about your psyche. And he’ll frame it as if he’s the superior emotional intellect and could teach you a thing or two about whatever, and she thinks that means he loves you. She says he’s always been like this, ever since you guys first became friends. Like, because he wants you to get on his level and he’s afraid to tell you, so he tells her, but only in this roundabout way because he doesn’t even want to admit to himself that he needs your admiration or whatever as much as he does. Does that make sense?”

Mike is stunned into silence and not sure how to respond. He’s shocked that Jay would confess this level of interest in Mike’s goings-on even to Lizzie.

“Sorry,” Rich says, making a face. “Maybe that was too much information.”

“No, it’s, it’s perfect, actually--”

They hear footsteps at the other end of the hallway outside the room and both turn toward the door. Jay appears after sufficient time for Mike to feel sure he didn’t hear any of that. He’s dressed for the wedding but not wearing his button-up shirt, jacket or tie yet, not wanting to wrinkle them before the ceremony. He looks fucking hot in a short-sleeved undershirt and belted dress pants, and the expression on his face is one of mild suspicion, as if the scent of their discussion about him is still on the air in here. 

“Everything okay?” Jay asks.

“Yep, wonderful!” Rich says. “Not raining yet.”

“Yeah.” Jay shifts his gaze to Mike in a way that makes Mike realize he’s always loved this: when Jay is done with pleasantries and ready to get down to business, he looks to Mike. “Jack says we should go ahead and get started out on the beach, while the clouds are still holding. I’m gonna go get dressed for the ceremony. You got this?”

“Got it,” Mike says, wanting to run over and hug him like a dope. He’s definitely going to spend the rest of this entire event thinking about Jay on the phone with Lizzie, passionately ranting about something Mike said that was wrong or insensitive or whatever. Mike can barely stop himself from shouting _don’t worry, I’m obsessed with you, too!_ at Jay’s back when he turns to go get ready. 

“Sorry for laying all that on you,” Mike says to Rich when Jay is gone.

“It’s okay,” Rich says, and he pats Mike’s shoulder as they head out of the room together. “It actually happens to me a lot. Usually in elevators.”

“You have a face people trust.”

“Eh, I think it’s more like I look like somebody with no room to judge.”

“Hey, don’t say that,” Mike says, pausing to turn to him. “You’re awesome, man. You have this big company you built by yourself, that’s fucking impressive. And Lizzie thinks you’re perfect. She said so, this morning. And you look great, in that.” 

Mike gestures generally to Rich’s wedding suit, which flatters him. Lizzie must have picked it out. Mike looks down at the similarly flattering suit he’s wearing and thinks of Jay with him at the shop back in Milwaukee, reaching up to adjust the shoulders and standing next to Mike at the tall mirror, making sure he looked nice for this. 

“Thanks,” Rich says, and when he smiles at Mike he looks so sincerely uplifted that Mike feels almost emotional or something, like they’re old friends having a moment together. 

“We should hang out, back in Milwaukee,” Mike says. “Me and you and Jay and Lizzie. We can do double dates. If Jay doesn’t dump me as soon as we’re home, I mean.”

“I’m rooting for ya,” Rich says, slapping Mike’s back. “How did he react to the whole, ah. Introduction of romance?”

Well, Mike thinks, flushing. He came three times.

“Pretty enthusiastically,” Mike says.

“You’re gonna be fine. C’mon, let’s get this ceremony thing happening before the downpour.”

“Okay. Thanks for giving me a pep talk about love on the way to your own wedding.”

“No problem.”

The ceremony is outside, contingency planned be damned, on a platform overlooking the beach. It reminds Mike of a helicopter landing pad, with a long aisle that runs between the two seating sections and a circular altar at the end. Mike sets up for filming near the altar, wondering idly what kind of place he’d like to get married in, if he ever did it. He thinks of what Jay would want: no audience, no self-written vows, no dancing afterward. Something Amish-like and somber, probably just the two of them. Maybe not even any witnesses, which would mean it could never be legal. Maybe it will never be legal in Wisconsin anyway, in their lifetimes. 

Mike would accept a him-and-Jay only ceremony, if Jay would be into it. That would be all Mike really required: Jay saying he wanted to do it, agreeing or asking. The latter is beyond the realm of even fantasy, but Mike would consider himself a married man instantaneously if he could ever get even a lukewarm acceptance out of Jay. 

The high winds from the oncoming storm accentuate Mike’s impression that a helicopter is going to land soon, maybe to evac them all out before the storm, but everyone goes along with the plan as if it will all magically be fine, which maybe is a metaphor for marriage itself. Mike is worried about what will happen to his equipment if the skies open up and dump buckets of rain down onto the whole assemblage, but he supposes he’s all in for whatever happens now, too. Everything is set up, in place, and he’s rolling as all the guests file out from the event hall and take their seats in the fifty or so chairs facing the ocean. 

Rich walks out with Jack to take their places on the helipad-like altar. Bridesmaids start marching out after that, grinning like they all got high before the ceremony and blinking against the blasting wind that wrecks havoc on their hairdos as they make their way down the aisle. Finally Jay appears at the end of the aisle, with Lizzie’s maid of honor on his arm. 

Mike doesn’t even care if Jay will see this on the raw footage and make fun of Mike or get mad about it or anything else. Mike zooms in on him, can’t help it. As Mike predicted, Jay is ridiculously hot in his perfectly tailored suit, with a dorky little boutonniere pinned over his pocket. He looks not just handsome but happy and grown up, when did he get so grown up? Jay still looked like a child when he and Mike met, and part of Mike has always been stuck thinking of him like that, but he’s not that kid anymore, he’s this man in a suit, hair so expertly styled that even a blasting tropical wind can’t disorder it, though it does pull one adorable little cowlick free. Mike focuses on Jay until it reaches absurdity, figuring Lizzie will forgive him because she’ll think it’s cute that Mike was so overcome, that he couldn’t help it.

Jay parts with the maid of honor and takes his place at Rich’s side, glancing over at Mike as he does. When Jay gives him a tiny smile, Mike almost does something crazy like-- What? Clutch at his chest? Blow Jay a kiss? He has no idea what sort of look he has on his face, even.

He pulls himself together when the bridal march starts playing from some hidden speakers and everyone stands, turning toward Lizzie as she makes her way outside on her dad’s arm. Jay Sr. looks handsome, too, and Mike thinks, a little guiltily, that this means Jay will still be hot when he’s his dad’s age. Lizzie looks almost cartoonishly beautiful, like she’s been painted from a different color pallette than everyone else present. She’s beaming like this blasting wind was all part of her plan. Mike makes sure to get a shot of Rich’s face, too, wishing he had a second cameraman. Rich is smiling like he knows something that everyone else doesn’t and like he’s almost tempted to laugh about it but for now he’s content to keep it to himself. Mike understands that look. He’s probably had it on his own face for days now, every time he looks at Jay.

The ceremony is pretty standard. Jack doesn’t utilize balloon animals, to Mike’s disappointment. Lizzie and Rich didn’t write their own vows, they just say the usual ones, exchange rings, and kiss to applause. Thunder booms overhead just afterward, and everyone screams, laughs, and starts hurrying to get inside. Rich and Lizzie go first, semi-running and holding hands.

“Here, gimme,” Jay says, breaking away from the rest of the recessional to help Mike gather up all the equipment before the rain starts. They can smell it on the air, and there’s more thunder, lightning, chairs tipping over as people start to run for it. 

“Fuck, fuck,” Mike says, gathering things clumsily into his arms. 

“It’s okay,” Jay says, unscrewing the tripod, his cowlick brushing Mike’s face when he leans over to help. “We’re gonna make it.”

Mike kisses him on the cheek, can’t help it. Jay snorts and looks at him like he’s crazy. 

“Sorry,” Mike says, still working on the tripod.

“Just grab it,” Jay says, and he picks up everything else while Mike tucks the whole still-mounted camera under his arm. “Everybody get out of the way!” Jay shouts. “We have the wedding footage here, okay, move!”

Mike cackles under his breath and watches Jay’s relatives obey this command. Even grandmas step aside for him and Mike as they race toward the event hall with all their stuff. Mike can hear the rain starting behind them, people shrieking as they get soaked. Jay was right: they make it inside with the equipment just in time. 

Jay helps Mike set everything up to film the reception. The storm has fully arrived and is raging outside, whipping fronds off palm trees and tearing them through the air, splattering them here and there against the reception area’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Something about this is making Mike want to take Jay to one of the rooms upstairs, pin him to a wall, kiss him and let him grind against Mike’s thigh until he’s coming in those tight-fitting pants. Mike would probably want that regardless of the weather, but all the thunder and lightning is making it feel that much more urgent, like it’s some responsibility he’s failing to perform. 

“You look really fucking good, by the way,” Mike says when the camera is off the tripod and on his shoulder. 

Jay shrugs and tries not to grin like he knows this is true, then does anyway.

“You too,” he says, and he straightens Mike’s tie. Mike fixes Jay’s hair for him, smoothing the cowlick back into place. 

“I have to take a few more pictures with the rest of them,” Jay says, pointing his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the wedding party. “Then I can help.” 

“Have fun,” Mike says, and he almost drops the fucking camera when Jay leans up onto his toes to kiss him on the cheek. Jay flees immediately afterward, without meeting Mike’s eyes. Mike doesn’t mind the hasty retreat, is beaming. He films Jay walking away and barely resists the urge to zoom in on his ass.

Shooting a wedding reception is something Mike has done before, for extra money when the VCR repair shop wasn’t bringing any in. It never fails to make him want a drink, and even though he’s happier than he’s been in years, maybe ever, he wants a glass from the trays of champagne that keep passing him by. He feels like celebrating, or something.

Maybe he’s also a little terrified by being this happy. It doesn’t feel natural, or trustworthy, or like something he’s allowed to have. He keeps feeling like he should still be looking in on this feeling from the outside, standing in a snowdrift and peering through a warmly lit window to watch people who are luckier than him laugh and hug each other like the party is never gonna end, for them.

Later, after toasts and first dances, when people are sitting down to eat, Jay finally reappears. He’s carrying a glass of champagne, and he hands it to Mike, taking the camera from him. 

“Take a break,” Jay says. “I’ll do this part.” 

“Dinner? You don’t have to shoot people eating. Come have a drink with me.” 

Jay considers this, shrugs, and relents. He finds another glass of champagne for himself and stows the camera with the rest of their stuff before following Mike out onto the covered front patio of the event hall, where one of Jay’s uncles is smoking a cigarette and having an argument with someone on his cell phone. The uncle gives Mike and Jay an irritable look, stamps out the cigarette and goes back inside, still bitching into his phone, in the thickest northern Illinois accent imaginable, about somebody back home screwing him over.

“Guess he’s having a bad day,” Mike says, and he throws back half the champagne in his glass in one huge gulp. 

“I guarantee you he’s the problem,” Jay says. He drinks from his own glass and watches the storm, free hand stuffed in his trouser pocket. His cheeks are a little flushed and his eyes are glassy, like maybe this is his third or fourth glass of champagne. “Sorry I abandoned you with all the camerawork,” Jay says, leaning close to Mike when the direction of the wind shifts, blowing some rain in at them. “Pictures always take forever.” 

“It’s fine.” Mike tucks his arm around Jay and pulls him closer as he finishes off the champagne. “Wow, Rich spared no expense. That’s the good shit.”

“Need to get you caught up,” Jay says, giving Mike a moony, half-drunk smile.

“Gotta stay sharp enough to shoot the cake cutting,” Mike says. He gives Jay a squeeze, appreciating the sentiment, and leans down to murmur in his ear, “And for after, when we get back to the house? Jesus, man. I want you so fucking bad right now.”

“Want me to what?” Jay asks, peering up at him with doe-eyed innocence.

Mike believes it for half a second, mouth hanging open, then Jay cracks and laughs hard.

“Oh my god,” Jay says. “You’re drunk after one glass?”

“Not remotely!”

“Then why’d you just look at me like you thought I seriously didn’t know what you meant?”

“Because, I, ah--” Mike scowls at the amusement on Jay’s face. It’s not fair for him to mix in fakeouts with all his actual obtuse weirdness.

Jay snickers wickedly and shoves Mike back in toward the reception, telling him to eat something.

The food is high quality, too, and Mike is hungrier than he realized, not having eaten all day. He has some surf and turf while seated beside Jay’s grandfather, a tiny German man who doesn’t seem altogether like he knows where he is. Everyone else at the table has cleared off to chitchat, get drink refills, or dance. Jay is laughing with Josh about something on the other side of the room, holding the camera against his hip.

“Are you Catherine’s new husband?” Jay’s grandfather asks Mike at one point. 

“No,” Mike says. “I’m with Jay.” 

“My son?”

“Grandson.”

“Oh, the little one. Where is he? I haven’t seen him.”

“He’s here, he just looks different now. Still little, though.” 

“What do you mean, that you’re with him?” Jay’s grandfather asks, leaning closer, smelling old.

“Uh.” Mike looks around for anyone who might save him, not sure how to answer that question when an old man is asking it. Germans are pretty tolerant, right? Maybe not the old ones. “We own a business together,” Mike says, disliking the lie-by-omission. Because now it actually is one.

Jay’s grandfather gives Mike a long look, like he’s waiting to hear the truth. 

“Also I love him,” Mike says, because he’s had two more glasses of champagne and is working on a fourth. He grabs from it and gulps more down while the old man stares at him.

“Oh, that,” the old man says, nodding to himself like this is a subplot in the drama of his own life that he momentarily forgot about. “Yes, his father told me, I think. Well, that’s fine. I don’t care for this music, do you?”

“Not at all,” Mike says, because this is some playlist Lizzie picked out and it’s cheesy as shit.

“Tell them to change it, would you?”

“Sure thing,” Mike says, glad for the excuse to bolt.

He spends the rest of the night sticking close to Jay. Even when Mike shoots the cake cutting, Jay is at his side, sipping from yet another glass of champagne. They’re both pretty tipsy by the time they’re packing up the equipment for the night, the newlyweds having departed for their honeymoon suite at the hotel. Rich and Lizzie both hugged Mike goodbye before leaving, which meant a lot to him, almost to a shocking degree, and he feels like he loves everyone in the place once they’re settled in talking to Jay’s cousins in a circle of chairs they’ve brought out to the front patio, calling out goodbyes as the older people head for the fleet of golf carts that will take them back to wherever they’re staying. The bar is still open inside, and it’s still raining, but just softly now. 

After one more glass of champagne, Jay is flat out sitting in Mike’s lap, red-faced because he’s laughing at something his cousin is saying or because Mike is holding him so comfortably, Jay perched on Mike’s thigh with Mike’s hand clamped around his waist, arm snug around Jay’s back. Jay has taken his jacket off and unbuttoned his shirt a little, loosened his tie. He doesn’t protest when Mike rubs his fingers over the end of his tie idly while they talk about whatever the fuck with his cousins. Mike keeps losing the thread of conversation, mostly concentrating on wanting to bury his face against Jay’s blushing throat and telling himself: not yet, not yet. Soon. 

He so likes the feeling of holding Jay by the end of his tie, maybe kinda sorta like it’s a leash, that he’s grateful to the booze for keeping him from getting hard, having mellowed him just enough to prevent that. For now, anyway.

By the time they board their own golf cart, Mike is near to shaking with the need to have Jay spread out for him on that bed back at the villa. The chauffer who’s driving tries to make small talk and quickly realizes they’re not interested. He’s quiet after his initial attempts, bearing them through the drizzle of rain and back toward the villas. Mike’s hand is on Jay’s leg, moving incrementally higher, until he’s squeezing and rubbing Jay’s thigh. Jay is so loose-limbed that he even lets Mike lean over to kiss and suck at his earlobe. The driver’s eyes are pointed forward, on the road, and nobody else is riding with them, so why not?

“I left my jacket at the place,” Jay says as they pull up to the villa. 

“Here,” Mike says, taking his off. He drapes it over Jay’s head, to protect his hair from the rain. Jay gives Mike a giddy, drunken grin, and Mike can’t stop himself, kisses him right on the mouth. 

Jay’s mother and Arnold took the equipment back with them in their car, and it’s a relief not to have to wrangle with it as they come into the house, which is dark. It’s an even bigger relief to not have to make chitchat over coffee. Mike has his hand hooked into the back of Jay’s belt as they make their way up the stairs, and his mouth is on the back of Jay’s neck even before they cross the threshold of their bedroom and shut the door behind them. 

Mike is torn between gushing out love confession-laced dirty talk and not taking a break from kissing Jay long enough to say anything. Mostly he makes involuntary noises, filthy and sweet and somewhere in between, pressing them to Jay’s mouth while they tear each other’s belts open and tumble onto the bed. Jay is already hard, from what Mike was doing to him in the golf cart or just from anticipation, and he whines for more when Mike strokes his tented erection. 

“What would you do if I made you come in your pants?” Mike asked, rubbing Jay through the fabric and watching him try to pull his tie off while also writhing up against Mike’s touch. “Would you be mad?”

“Nh, yeah.” Jay gives Mike a look like he’s actually not sure. 

“C’mere,” Mike says, grabbing the end of the tie and pulling Jay toward him with it, kissing him again. Jay moans into Mike’s mouth and Mike tightens his grip a little, wrapping the end of the tie around his fingers.

“Mike,” Jay says when Mike pulls back to lick his cheek. 

“Hmm?”

“Just. That’s good, that’s really good, puh, please--”

“What, this?” Mike asks, closing his fingers around Jay’s dick more tightly. “Or this?” He yanks on the tie and Jay gasps, answering his question. “Can I leave marks on you now?” Mike asks, bringing his mouth to Jay’s throat. He runs his teeth along the line of the tie where it’s touching Jay’s skin, having slipped up out of his shirt collar. “Or not yet?”

“I told you,” Jay says, eyes flashing. He’s always had this ability to be totally gone and then sober in a blink, or seemingly so. It freaks Mike out. “I want you to turn me inside out.”

“You didn’t tell me that.” 

“I did, I-- Mph--” Jay is back to seeming drunk again in a blink, pulling Mike’s shirt open. “Take this off,” he says, popping at least one button. “And, everything, I want. To try it again.” 

“It?”

“Sucking your dick,” Jay says, whispering this right into Mike’s face in a way that makes them both laugh.

“You’re such a cute drunk,” Mike says, hurrying to open his shirt while Jay watches. He pulls his tie off and tosses it on the floor. Jay is playing with the end of his own tie and not taking it off yet, for reasons. “Missed this,” Mike admits, because he’s drunk, too.

“What’d you miss?” Jay asks, looking sad about it already.

“Drinking with you and seeing you loosen up and act goofy. You’d kinda flirt with me, sometimes.” 

“I would not.” 

“I’ll admit it was super fucking rare, but that’s why I remember so well. It happened! A few times.”

“Like when?” Jay grins and spreads his legs a little, demonstrating that he knows how to flirt even while he tries to deny it. 

“Once, when we were at the bar together and you were laughing,” Mike says. “You sort of fell onto me, and your forehead touched my shoulder for just a second. Seemed intentional, like. Whatever joke I’d told wasn’t _that_ funny. And then when you lifted your face you had this grin, like. Like the kind of smile you give someone when you’re just fucked up enough to hope they’ll try to kiss you.”

“Oh my god.” Jay snickers and undoes more buttons on his shirt, leaving the tie loose around his neck. “You were tracking my every move like that? Really? Even while drinking?” 

“You’re surprised?” 

Mike has to backtrack a little-- Have they not talked yet about how obsessed they are with each other? He supposes he’s only had that conversation with Rich, oddly enough. 

Jay shrugs and chews his lip, probably holding in some confession. That’s fine, Mike thinks. They can talk later. Feels important to do this first. 

Mike is the perfect level of drunk for it, happy and near-fearless but calm, too. He opens his pants and tugs his cock out over the waistband of his boxers. He’s got his shirt fully open now but doesn’t bother to push it off or even shove his pants down. He wants to do this half-clothed, wants to see Jay’s little wedding outfit get so fucking wrinkled. Mike will pay his dry cleaning bill, back in Milwaukee.

Deciding to leave his clothes on gives Mike an idea. He approaches the bed and puts one foot on the mattress, still wearing his shoes. He wants to totally wreck the white sheets on this bed before they have to leave them behind forever. 

Jay stares up at him, starry-eyed. Like Mike, he’s pulled his shirt open but hasn’t removed it, and his pants are unzipped but still on, his cock pressed hard against the front of his tight black briefs. Mike has to wonder if Jay wore those just for him, for this, or if they go with the fancy suit, brought out for that sort of special occasion and not this one. 

Jay’s tie is draped diagonally against his chest, his undershirt rucked up halfway. Mike grabs the end of the tie and pulls Jay up, until he’s gasping and staring at Mike’s cock, which is pointed right at his face, just an inch or two away from his mouth. 

“This okay?” Mike asks. 

“Yeah,” Jay says. He’s shaking a little. Mike can feel it via the tie. Jay swallows and stares up into Mike’s face, pupils widening. “Wipe it clean, though,” he says.

Mike looks down at his dick, the slit glistening with precome. It’s a little bit menacing, he must admit. He wishes Jay was into the wetness as part of the menace. Since he’s not, Mike wipes it away with his palm. He considers licking it off, to be gross or funny or something, but doesn’t, because then Jay might not want to kiss him after.

“I’m not gonna swallow it,” Jay says, throat bobbing after he’s said so. “So don’t--”

“I would never come in your mouth without warning,” Mike says, trying not to be insulted. Jay is nervous, drunk, it’s fine. “Jesus, man. Just do whatever you want.” 

Mike slackens his grip on the tie a little. Jay whines. It sounds like a complaint. 

“Use it, though,” Jay says, voice soft. He touches the tie, and Mike’s hand. “Okay? Just. I’ll tell you if it’s too much, but. Show me how.”

Mike moans and nods, understanding now that Jay both needs to be told what to do and wants to be calling all the shots even so. Mike should have fucking known. Of course this is what Jay is like in bed. 

It’s perfect, Mike thinks, because everything about them has always involved this push and pull of who gets to be in charge versus who’s doing what he was told. He assumes Jay stayed a virgin for this long because he never found someone else who does it right, like Mike does, refusing to give up any ground until he gives up everything, because Jay knows how to make him want to do both.

Mike tugs on the tie just enough to get Jay’s lips bumping against the head of his cock, and Jay’s shocked little gasp is warm and sharp enough to get Mike swallowing another moan. He hopes he won’t leak at the tip again and scare Jay off, because jesus god he really wants this, and Jay looks like he does, too, already running this tongue around Mike’s cockhead while staring up at him, letting him watch. 

“Fuck,” Mike says, staring. He’s glad he’s a little drunk, wants this to last forever. Jay’s eyes flutter shut and he sighs like he’s in heaven when Mike gives the tie a little tug, pulling Jay’s mouth down along his shaft. Jay is still just lapping at him, but it’s less random and cautious than it was yesterday. His mouth is wet, and when Mike pulls him down to the base of his cock Jay makes out with it shamelessly, starting to look like he wishes it was in his mouth, between his spit-shiny lips. 

Mike gives him some slack on the tie, waiting to see what he’ll do with it. Jay peers up at him sweetly, waiting for direction. 

“Open,” Mike says, touching Jay’s mouth with his free hand. 

Jay obeys and lets Mike push two fingers into his mouth. He sucks at them hungrily, eyes slipping shut again while Mike strokes his tongue. Mike is so fucking turned on that he’s leaking along his slit again. He pulls his hand out of Jay’s mouth so he can wipe it away, then taps the head of his dried-off dick against Jay’s swollen bottom lip. 

Jay stares up at Mike’s face while he opens his mouth around his cockhead, and his eyes seem to be both asking Mike if he’s doing this right and saying that he fucking knows he is. Mike has no doubt that the expression on his face is one of complete, slavish adoration as he watches Jay suck him into his mouth just a little, his tongue flicking in soft, teasing, perfect strokes over the slit when he’s holding Mike between his lips. 

“Fuck, that’s so hot,” Mike says, meaning both the heat of Jay’s wet mouth and also everything about this, everything. His grip on Jay’s tie has gotten tight again, unintentionally this time. 

Mike licks over his lips, tries to get his breathing under control. He pulls on the tie, just a little. 

Jay moans and closes his eyes, sliding forward, taking more of Mike’s dick into his mouth.

If Mike hadn’t had like seven or eight glasses of champagne he would have broken his promise and exploded into Jay’s mouth just for that, but as it is he’s okay, though maybe closer than he should be, already.

“You’re doing so good,” Mike says, voice shaky. His hand is shaking, too, when he runs his fingers through Jay’s hair.

Jay sighs around Mike’s cock like he appreciates the praise. Mike whines at the back of his throat, feeling like this is probably the peak moment of his life, it’s never going to get better than this, and if he could have this all the time-- oh god. He’d never do anything else again. 

“That’s good,” Mike says, whispering, feeling Jay’s mouth get wetter for the sound of his voice or the feeling of Mike’s fingers in his hair, or maybe it’s just for Mike’s dick in his mouth and the pressure of the tie at the back of his neck when Mike pulls on it again. “There you go,” Mike says, starting to sweat and sort of shocked that Jay hasn’t choked yet. He’s so calm for Mike like this, like he’s needed it, too. “Yeah, so good, Jay. Good, that’s right. You can take a little more.” 

Jay whimpers around his dick and Mike has to stop, is going to come. 

“Hang on,” he says, loosening his grip on the tie and pushing on Jay’s forehead gently, easing him off. “Okay, shh-shit, careful--” 

“Are you gonna come?” Jay asks. He nods and licks over his lips before Mike can answer. “I fuh, felt, it was like you got thicker, a little--”

Mike whines and drops to his knees. He grabs Jay and yanks him forward, kissing him, and reaches down to jack himself, groaning into Jay’s mouth when Jay wraps his legs around him. Jay’s mouth feels messy and hot against Mike’s in the best way, and he’s pressing his tongue in past Mike’s lips, holding him so close that Mike has to stroke himself against the side of the bed, which feels good but a little awkward. 

He thinks about coming on Jay’s upturned face and then licking him clean, telling him it will be okay, that he’ll get every drop. When he pulls free from kissing Jay to get a better angle for jerking himself he sees that Jay has his hand stuck into his open pants, that he’s been rubbing his cock through his underwear while they kiss. 

Mike comes with a groan, pumping it against the side of the bed while Jay watches, legs spread, panting, still touching himself while Mike unloads for his viewing pleasure. Mike wonders if he even realizes he’s doing it.

“Can I?” Mike asks, when he can talk again, and they both look down at Jay’s hand. 

“Yeah,” Jay says, nodding. He pulls his hand out of his pants, scoots forward and spreads his legs wider, fucking offering himself to Mike. 

Mike isn’t sure if Jay expected him to use his hand, but he fucking _shouts_ when Mike leans into mouth him through his damp underwear instead, and when Mike feels Jay’s hands on his head he’s sure for a moment that Jay is going to push him off and say that’s dirty or something, but he’s actually holding Mike in place while Mike makes out with his fabric-covered dick, thank god.

“Mike,” Jay says, thrusting up against his mouth. “Please, please--”

“Shhh,” Mike says, sincerely, because Jay is getting kind of loud and his mom and Arnold are sleeping downstairs. Mike grins up at Jay wickedly, so in love with how he looks right now and how gone he is for this, for Mike, that he wants this to last and last, but he knows it won’t. Jay is shaking, close to coming already. “Don’t worry,” Mike says, giving Jay’s cock a little rub with his fingers, still over the fabric, too soft to set him off. “Gonna take care of you,” he says.

Jay is beyond speaking. He’s just making noises, cracked little half-swallowed things at the back of his throat. He moans when Mike finally pulls his underwear down, freeing his dick, and comes hard almost as soon as Mike wraps his mouth around his bare cock. Mike sinks down all the way to the base, swallowing and marveling at the fact that this is the first time he’s ever lamented a blow job not lasting longer when he was the giver, not the recipient. 

Mike wonders if he should continue, like last night. He pulls off Jay with a long parting lick and looks up at him when he hisses and pushes his hips up like he wants more. 

Jay shakes his head when he sees the questioning look on Mike’s face. 

“I can’t do it twice if I’ve been drinking,” Jay says, still breathless. 

“Darn,” Mike says, surging up to kiss him. 

“But,” Jay says, against Mike’s mouth, eyes bright with some kind of want that his orgasm didn’t sate. “You could. Something else, this-- C’mere.”

Jay crawls onto the bed and collapses, still shaky from coming. He rolls onto his side, away from Mike, and pulls the tie off over his head, then shrugs out of his shirt and tosses it onto the floor with the tie.

“Take your shoes off,” Jay says when he turns back to look at Mike from over his shoulder. “And, like. Press up behind me. Okay?”

Mike obeys, kicking his shoes away and then climbing onto the bed, moving close and hugging Jay from behind. He pushes Jay’s undershirt up in back, and they both groan for the feeling of Mike’s chest pressing against Jay’s bare back. Mike still has his wedding shirt on, but it’s wide open around him with no undershirt beneath, and he hides his giddy smile in Jay’s hair when Jay writhes shamelessly and reaches back to grab Mike’s thigh, holding him in place. 

“Where do you want me to touch you?” Mike asks, murmuring this in Jay’s ear and already stroking over his chest, pausing to thumb at his nipples. 

“Stick your hand down the back of my pants,” Jay says, eyes closed and face red. His cock twitches when Mike strokes his belly. Mike is starting to get hard again, too, against Jay’s squirming ass. 

“Like this?” Mike says, sliding his hand down over the sweaty small of Jay’s back and beneath his open belt, inside his pants and underwear, down along the crack of his ass.

Jay groans, and whines a little when Mike whispers _shhhh_ in his ear. 

“Do I need to gag you?” Mike asks, getting both arms around Jay so he can keep stroking his chest with one hand while he pulls his ass cheeks apart with the other. 

“Mike,” Jay says in answer, eyes shut.

“Hmm? What do you want, Jay? Want my finger in here?” he asks, sneaking it down to rub his fingertip over the place where Jay is clearly burning to be touched. Jay gasps and spreads his legs wider. Mike moans, wondering if Jay has even touched himself like this before. He’s twitching against Mike’s stroking fingertip and squirming in his grip, his cock rising up off his stomach. 

“Inside,” Jay says when he can actually process the question, nodding and pushing back against the hand Mike has buried between his ass cheeks, then forward against Mike’s other hand as it wraps around his hardening cock. 

“Don’t have lube,” Mike says, regretfully. 

“Use this,” Jay says, and he puts his hand over Mike’s on his dick, dragging one of Mike’s fingers through the precome that’s already pooling over the head, thick and wet. Mike had noticed he makes a lot of it. His briefs were soaked even before Mike put his mouth there.

“Have you fingered yourself with your own juices before?” Mike asks, so hard now, rutting against Jay’s thigh a little. 

“No,” Jay says, but it doesn’t sound like the truth. 

Mike laughs under his breath and bites at Jay’s throat, gets a breathy gasp out of him. He’s still teasing his fingertip over Jay’s hole, wanting to be inside him but enjoying this, too. He could watch Jay fall apart like this all night, every night, for the rest of his life. He’s addicted to this already, won’t be able to sleep without it. 

“Okay, Jay,” Mike says, pulling his hand out of Jay’s pants so he can reach around to smear some of Jay’s precome on his fingers. Jay shivers against Mike for the feeling and breathes out in a long exhale through his nose. “Guess we’ll both find out together if you like this or not.”

Jay makes a sound that’s almost like a laugh. He hasn’t opened his eyes even a little since asking for this, as if he wants to hide from how much he wants it. 

Mike carefully reinserts his hand down the back of Jay’s pants, not wanting to waste any precome by smearing it on Jay’s ass cheeks. He uses his thumb and pinky finger to spread him, and they both groan for the first wet push of Mike’s finger. Mike presses in with just his fingertip, and Jay goes tense all over in a way that makes Mike think he’ll come just for this. 

He doesn’t, maybe only because he already came once. Mike’s hand has gone still on Jay’s dick, and he’s just holding him loosely, letting Jay hump his palm. Mike pushes his finger into him a little deeper, biting down on Jay’s bare shoulder as he does. 

Jay’s breathing is crazy and his ass is clenching in nervous little pulses as Mike pushes into him, slow. Mike moves his other hand up over Jay’s chest, drinking in the sad little noise Jay makes when Mike is no longer touching his dick. He touches Jay’s nipples instead, matching the way he handles them with the too gentle, teasing way he’s working his finger inside Jay in tiny nudges, opening him up. 

“I’m gonna touch your prostate,” Mike says, murmuring this into Jay’s ear. “Are you going to be loud, when I do it? Do I need to cover your mouth?”

“Yes,” Jay says, voice breaking, desperate. He makes a little sniffling sound and finally opens his eyes, turning to muggily meet Mike’s gaze. “Please,” he says, so softly. 

Mike kisses him on the mouth before bringing his hand up to cover it. Jay keeps his foggy eyes open until the first brush of Mike’s finger over his prostate, and then he’s gone: arching and moaning against Mike’s palm, slamming his ass back against Mike’s hand in a way that jerks his finger in deeper. 

“Yeah, so good,” Mike says, watching him go crazy for it, touching him there again. Jay sobs against Mike’s hand, shaking all over. His dick is dribbling steadily onto his belly, bright red and full. Mike knows he’ll come if he’s touched there, but he’s going to come anyway. “Feels so good, yeah?” Mike says, still speaking directly into Jay’s ear. He drags his finger over Jay’s prostate again, until he’s sobbing more softly, shaking so hard. “So good, Jay, you can come if you need to. Do you want to come?”

Jay doesn’t answer, just cries. His eyes are dry but he’s legit sobbing, moving his hips back weakly to try to get Mike to touch him there again. 

“Hmm?” Mike says, waiting. He takes his hand away from Jay’s mouth, which is maybe dangerous. He’s pretty sure Jay has forgotten where they are. He looks like he might not even know his own name right now. Mike brings his hand down to stroke between Jay’s pecs, then lower. “Tell me, Jay. Do you need me to make you come?”

“Mike,” Jay manages to say, barely, pressing back against Mike’s hand. “Fuck-- Fuck me, please.” 

“Like this?” Mike moves his finger out a little. Jay whines, and sighs when Mike pushes it back in, not touching his prostate again yet. “With my finger?”

“Yes, but, yes-- Mike--”

“What, Jay? Do you want to work your way up to my dick? Want my big dick inside you, fucking you like this? Think you could take it?”

Jay brings own hand up to cover his mouth when he moans, which is the hottest thing Mike has ever seen, especially as he’s watching it while his finger moves inside Jay, winding him up like a toy. 

“Yeah, it would feel good, wouldn’t it?” Mike asks, speaking into Jay’s ear and getting kind of close himself, dragging his dick against Jay’s thigh in thrusts that he’s keeping as subtle as he can. “Do you think so?” Mike asks, stroking Jay’s belly, his knuckles brushing too soft against the underside of Jay’s dick, making him jerk and moan again. “Think it would feel good, having my cock in here?” Mike asks, and he rubs Jay’s prostate before he can answer, hard. 

Or maybe it is the answer, the way Jay arches up and comes with a broken cry that he hides against his palm. He’s trying to stuff his fist in his mouth or something as he empties onto himself, clenched up tight around Mike’s finger. Mike gives his prostate a little swipe as he’s coming down from it, curious. Jay shouts and shakes his head, finished for now.

“Shh-shhh, okay,” Mike says, and he gives Jay’s hot cheek a soothing little lick as he draws his finger out of him. “Mhm, look,” he says, hoping he’s not going too far when he drags his other hand through the come on Jay’s chest. “Dirty.”

Jay doesn’t even seem to register this, is brainless and soft in Mike’s arms, eyes half open and unfocused. He opens his lips for Mike’s hot kisses but really just receives them, his tongue sluggish and mouth soaked.

“Mike,” Jay says when he can talk again, letting Mike roll him over so they’re facing each other, Mike’s throbbing dick resting against Jay’s thigh. 

“I’m here,” Mike says, tucking his arm around Jay’s shoulders. “You okay? Want me to clean you off?” 

Jay looks down at himself and groans, nods. But when Mike starts to move away Jay whines and pulls him close again. 

“Not yet,” Jay says, reaching down to touch Mike’s dick. He takes a deep breath and exhales, watching Mike’s face change for the feeling of Jay’s fingers squeezing inexpertly around him. Jay is still a little shaky, his grip weak and loose. “Would you really?” Jay asks, moving his face closer to Mike’s, whispering. “Fuck me, would you-- Train me, like. To take it?”

“Yes,” Mike says, groaning this out from the pit of his fucking soul. “Fuck. Jay. There’s, ah. Nothing I’d rather do.”

Jay smiles a little, bites his lip. 

“Would you want to come inside me?” Jay asks, tightening his grip and stroking Mike faster. “Make me fucking filthy with it?”

“ _Yes_ \--”

“Yeah, I know. I know what you want, Mike. You want to fucking cover me in your come, don’t you?”

Mike moans. Jay is really pumping his dick now. Mike needs lube or a better angle or something, but he might come anyway, because Jay’s voice, the things he’s saying--

“You want it right now, don’t you?” Jay says, and he looks down at Mike’s dick. 

Mike looks, too, watches Jay’s hand moving on him and expels a choppy breath, trying to thrust through his grip.

“Yeah, you do,” Jay says, pressing his face to Mike’s. “You fucking want that, don’t you? You want to make me all dirty and sticky and wet, Mike. I know you do.” 

“Please,” Mike says, against his will, like Jay reached into his mouth and pulled the word out.

“Are you begging me to let you come?”

“Yes, yeah--”

“Where do you want to come, Mike?” 

“Up your fucking ass, actually,” Mike manages to say, dragging his gaze up to meet Jay’s even as he starts to shake, feeling his orgasm tightening in his balls, at the base of his spine, everywhere. 

Jay holds in his laugh, but just for half a second. He kisses Mike on the mouth and twists his hand around Mike’s dick. 

“Do it on my chest,” Jay says, suddenly releasing him and causing him to make an awful whimpering noise of complaint. “Since it’s already dirty,” Jay says, prim again and rolling onto his back, hands upturned on the bed as if he’s surrendering. He’s grinning, nudging Mike onto him with his leg. “C’mon,” Jay says. “I know what you want. Do it.”

Mike is so shaky with the need to unload that he can barely stay upright, but he manages to kneel up over Jay, grab his dick, and to somehow not groan loud enough to shake the whole fucking house off its foundation when he comes all over Jay’s chest.

Jay is making a face when Mike is done, like he didn’t love that. Mike appreciates that he was willing to try it, and falls down to kiss Jay without pressing their chests together, figuring he wouldn’t want that. 

“Sorry,” Mike says when he pulls back, his arms shaking like they’re not going to hold him up much longer. 

“For what?” Jay laughs and touches Mike’s face, shrugs. “It’s gross, but I’ll live. I’m gonna take a shower. Will you wash your hand?”

“I could shower with you,” Mike says, feeling slow and way too tired to do anything but fall over onto his side and sleep, preferably with Jay pressed up against him. 

“You have to go after me,” Jay says, already moving out from under Mike. “Showering is sacred, I can’t do sex at the same time.”

Mike snorts at Jay saying it like that: do sex? He’s still drunk. They both are. Mike slumps onto the bed and watches Jay take his pants and underwear off on the way to the bathroom. 

“Hey,” Mike says before Jay can disappear into it. 

Jay turns back, showing Mike his come-smeared chest and spent dick, everything. 

I love you, Mike thinks, looking at him. He doesn’t say it, because Jay has already heard it. It’s all over Mike’s face and in his eyes and Jay can read him like a book. 

“Don’t take long,” Mike says. “I miss you.”

“Eugh,” Jay says, wrinkling his nose, but he’s grinning, too. “Don’t forget to wash your hands.”

Mike stays slumped on the bed, listening to Jay turn on the shower and climb in. He left the door open, but Mike still feels weird when he gets up and goes in to wash his hands at the sink. He feels like he should say something, because Jay is right there, behind the heavy shower curtain, but he can’t think of anything that wouldn’t devolve into embarrassing stream of consciousness begging that this won’t end when they get home and resume their normal lives. He yawns at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, the weight of the day catching up to him. The past four days have all contained months’ worth of excitement to unpack, but at the same time they’ve flown by. 

“What time is our flight tomorrow?” Mike asks, just to say something. He knows what time the plane leaves, has been dreading it.

“Three o’clock,” Jay says. “So we need to leave here at like noon.” 

“Kay. I’m, uh. Going to bed.” 

Jay snorts. “Okay. I’ll be right there.”

This makes Mike feel better. Jay will be right there, in bed with him. Where else is he going to go? 

Mike uses a damp washcloth to clean all the stray traces of come off of himself and returns to the bedroom. The lamp on Jay’s side of the bed is still on, was on the whole time they fucked around. Mike always wants to fuck with the lights on. There’s so much of Jay he just wants to stare at for hours, days. 

He gets in bed, under the sheets, naked and hoping Jay won’t tell him to put underwear on. Does Jay get to decide what Mike wears to bed, if they’re boyfriends for real? Mike isn’t sure. He’s never had a boyfriend and hasn’t had a regular girlfriend in years. He would usually let girls he was really into walk all over him at the beginning, then would get tired of it and start being gradually ruder and more dismissive, until they told him to fuck off. 

He grins when Jay emerges from the bathroom, dried off and holding a towel around his waist, wet hair combed back. Mike would never do that gradual meanness shit to Jay. For all he cares, Jay can boss him around for life. He can tell Mike to wear a fucking gorilla costume to bed if he wants to. 

“What is this look on your face?” Jay asks, pausing when he’s halfway to the bed, still holding the towel around himself. 

“You don’t want to know,” Mike says.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s real fuckin’ sappy, Jay, now get over here.”

Jay grins and snaps off the lamp. He drops the towel and gets in bed, scooting into Mike’s arms. He doesn’t protest Mike’s nakedness, just turns over so that his back is pressed to Mike’s chest and moans for the feeling of Mike holding him tight under the sheet. 

“Let’s get married,” Mike says, pinching Jay’s nipple so he’ll think it’s a joke.

Jay laughs like it is a joke, so it must be one. 

“Want to hear something awful?” Jay asks. 

“Mhmm?” Mike puts his face against Jay’s throat, not sure that he does. 

“When we signed the contract, when we bought the shop? I did think, like. Okay, now we’re together forever. And I was so fucking glad.” 

“Oh god. Me too, me too--”

“Mike, ah, you’re crushing my ribcage--”

“Sorry, sorry.” Mike moans and makes himself hold Jay a little less tightly, petting his chest in apology. “Just. Oh my god, Jay. Fuck. I’m sorry I made that dumb joke, back then. About it being the closest thing we’d get to a marriage certificate.”

“I don’t care,” Jay says, in the incredulous way he always does when he actually cares very much and doesn’t want anybody to think he possibly could. “It’s not like-- Mike, just go to sleep. You’re wasted.”

“I am not! I don’t feel that drunk anymore.”

“Not from booze. You’re drunk on this other stuff.”

“What, sex?” Mike says, though he knows Jay meant something more like love.

“Yeah, I dunno. You’re slap happy. Get some rest, okay?”

“I couldn’t possibly sleep,” Mike says, though he’s never felt more comfortable, wrapped around Jay under a bedsheet that smells like sex. The combination of that and Jay’s freshly cleaned skin is perfect, as is the feeling of Jay’s bare ass pressed snug against Mike’s dick under the sheet, making him almost want to get hard again. He likes this, though, too, just resting together after their antics.

“Well, I need to sleep,” Jay says. He still tilts his neck to give Mike more access when Mike presses kisses there. “So don’t keep me up, okay?”

“Jay, where’s your spirit of adventure? We could be fucking all night long.” 

Jay just sighs. Mike lifts his head and peeks to make sure he’s smiling. He is.

“God, I’m so happy,” Mike says, unable to hold it in.

Jay snorts and pats Mike’s hand, which is closed around Jay’s shoulder, holding fast. 

“Okay, Mike. Me too. Go to sleep.”

“Don’t lie there thinking I’m always like this after sex,” Mike says. “It’s not sex, it’s you.”

“I wasn’t thinking that.” 

“Well. Good.”

“Mike, seriously--”

“Okay, okay! I’m going to sleep. Right now.”

Mike buries his face against the back of Jay’s neck, determined not to sleep. He can feel that Jay is still awake, too, adjusting in his arms and sighing again. Mike wants to at least stay awake long enough to feel Jay slackening into sleep against him. 

It’s started raining again outside, or maybe it never fully stopped. The steady patter of it on the roof and windows is too perfect a lull, and Jay is too perfectly warm against Mike’s chest, the heat of his skin complimenting the chill of the air conditioning that somebody has put on blast. Mike can’t fight sleep for long, is actually out pretty quick.

He dreams that he’s in that house again, the shitty one where he lived with three other guys in the suburbs just outside of Milwaukee. The house where he had the fight with Jay. He’s there alone and can’t find his way out, just keeps wandering through vaguely familiar rooms cluttered with garbage from a party and inevitably ending up back in the kitchen, where it happened, every time bracing himself for Jay to suddenly be there, ready to finish destroying him.

He has other dreams, too, better ones, and for a while just sleeps. When he wakes up the rain has stopped and the skies look clear through the high windows. Mike isn’t sure why this freaks him out. He wants the rain back. He’s afraid things will change today, and they’re off to a bad start on that count, just for the stormy weather having cleared away.

Jay is fast asleep, rolled onto his stomach with both arms pushed up under his pillow. Mike wakes him up by kissing his back and shoulders, his neck. Jay makes little noises and blinks at Mike a few times, seems determined to keep sleeping. 

“Did I wear you out?” Mike asks when Jay moans and rolls onto his side, facing Mike and still looking so sleepy. Mike kisses his face, his forehead. “It’s like ten already,” Mike says, regretfully. He never wants to leave this bed. It feels magic. He wonders how much it would cost to have it shipped back to Milwaukee.

“Seriously, it’s that late?” Jay says, voice thick. He looks at the clock on the table by Mike’s side of the bed and moans. “Fuck.”

“Yeah. Are you okay? Are you sore?”

“What, from sucking your dick?”

“Uhh, I meant more from-- The other thing, but sure.”

Jay just snorts and rubs his hands over his face, doesn’t really answer. He’s blushing when he looks at Mike again, so Mike decides to drop it. He touches Jay’s belly under the blankets and tells himself not to freak out when Jay flinches a little. He’s probably just ticklish there.

“I had a kind of nightmare thing,” Mike says when Jay gives him a nervous look that he’s not sure how to interpret. 

“Yeah?” Jay says. 

Something in Mike is screaming: don’t do it. Nope. Worst idea ever. 

But his response to that little voice has always been to go all in with his bad ideas.

“I think it was about, uh, our fight,” Mike says, making himself hold Jay’s gaze. “You know, the big one.” The only real one, actually. “Back in oh-three. I’ve been thinking about it, like. A lot, actually. This past week or so.”

Jay frowns, and Mike’s bad feeling about bringing this up is confirmed, because Jay looks pissed off that Mike dared to mention it and Mike is already feeling defensive, ready to tell him why he’s not allowed to get pissed off.

“Why would you be thinking about that?” Jay asks. 

“Because of how impossible it was to live without you,” Mike says. “Before I even knew I wanted you this much.” 

“Sure,” Jay says, calm to a degree that’s making Mike angry, which he knows isn’t fair. “But it was good for us, really. To be apart for a minute while we both figured things out.”

Mike recoils, sitting up on his elbow.

A minute? Good? Figuring things out? 

None of that is accurate and Jay fucking knows it. 

“Are you kidding me right now?” Mike says, trying to keep his voice as not-angry as possible. It’s already difficult. He’s been holding this in for way too long. “I was lucky I survived. I think there was a full five days at one point where I had nothing but booze and cigarettes in my system. I longed for death, Jay.”

“Jesus,” Jay says. He’s giving Mike a look like this level of honesty is distasteful, even now that they’re naked in bed together. Maybe especially now. “It was painful, yeah, but it just made us stronger in the long term.” 

“No, fuck that.” Mike really doesn’t want to get worked up, not right now, but it’s too late to turn back. His heart is pounding. “Nothing about that fucking nightmare made me stronger. It weakened me permanently. But, hey, I guess it was different for me, since I was the only one who also got emotionally eviscerated when you tried to end our friendship.”

“Why are you doing this now?” Jay asks. He doesn’t even look a little sad about it, just annoyed, like Mike is going off script without his permission. “What’s the point?” 

“The point is you’re still pretending it was just this little bump in the road, this thing you did to me, to us, and I’m over here like, I cannot live through that again so please promise me that you at least understand how bad you hurt me?” 

He expects Jay to jump at the chance and is confused, then terrified, when he doesn’t. 

Jay groans and sits up, scratching at his scalp and avoiding Mike’s pleading stare. 

“That was a million years ago,” Jay says. “We were kids. It’s fucking embarrassing to even think about it now.”

“Embarrassing isn’t the word I’d use.”

“Mike, what the fuck?” Jay finally turns to him, scowling. “I just woke up. Why are you attacking me about something I did eleven years ago?”

“Oh, I dunno, Jay, maybe because you never fucking apologized? And even now you don’t seem to think you need to?”

“I did apologize!”

“You did not! When?”

“Ah-- I don’t fucking know, at some point! Right? I mean, we were friends again--”

“Yeah,” Mike says, his disbelief at how Jay is responding to this growing even as he tells himself of course, of course. Of course this is Jay’s fucking reaction. “Sure, we were friends again, right. Because I crawled back with my tail between my legs and threw myself at your feet.”

“Oh, bullshit! You treated me like I was on friendship probation for years.”

“Can you fucking blame me? After the things you said to me?”

“What the hell did I even say that was so unforgivable?”

Jay at least seems to realize that saying that now might count, because he winces a little when Mike gives him a wide-eyed look of pure disbelief before flinging himself out of the bed. 

“Okay, I know,” Jay says, holding his hands up. “Or I don’t know, really, I mean-- I didn’t even know what was coming out of my mouth at the time, like. I was drunk, for one.”

Mike goes over to his suitcase and digs around, hating that he’s literally naked while Jay sits there pretending not to remember what was said. Or, worse: telling Mike the truth, that he actually never cared enough to obsess over their fight the way Mike did, until every word was burned into his brain forever. 

He thinks of what Rich told him about Jay telling Lizzie about everything Mike says and does and all the issues Jay has with both. Mike grits his teeth, rage building through him like a pillar of flame. That little fucking liar, sitting over there acting like Mike is some kind of emotional mess for caring about this. After everything they did to each other in bed, everything they went through together over the past four days, not to mention the past eleven years, Jay is still holding up his pathetic little shields when Mike gets too close.

“Look, sorry,” Jay says, in the least sincere, most judgmental tone possible. “Mike, what do you want? You want me to promise we’ll never fight again? After you just picked one with me out of nowhere?”

“It’s not out of nowhere to me, Jay!” Mike says, whirling to glare at him when he’s dressed in boxers and a t-shirt. “And you can sit there and pretend like it was some non-event in your life, but I fucking know you weren’t just skipping along with buisness as usual after I left town.” 

Mike tells himself to stop, but the look on Jay’s face is too collected, cold, cynical. It’s like a sheet of ice that’s begging to be shattered, because there’s other stuff behind the ice, messy and painful but real, better. 

“Your mother told me about the car crash,” Mike says.

Jay recoils a little but doesn’t look furious yet, just confused.

“What car crash?” he asks.

“Well.” Mike already wants to take it back, but not as much as he wants to throw it in Jay’s face. “Maybe it wasn’t a crash, but she said she had to pick you up from the side of the road because you were sobbing too hard to drive.” 

Jay’s eyes get big in a way that recalls the look on his face when Mike said the thing that lead to their fight. Which is. Not good. 

“When did she tell you that?” Jay asks, shifting to the dead-eyed psycho killer expression that Mike hasn’t seen on him in a while. 

Mike puts on his jeans and waits to wake up from this new nightmare, but he knows it’s real and knew it was coming. He was never going to hold this in forever, was always going to fire the fact that he knows it at Jay eventually, because Jay has all the weapons that can bring Mike down and Mike only has this one meager defense against them. 

“When?” Jay presses, raw anger pooling in to fill the space in his eyes where a light that looked like a soul had crept in temporarily. 

“A few days ago.” 

“Oh, jesus!” Jay flings himself out of bed. He pulls the sheet with him, wrapping it around his waist. “So that’s what this has all been about.” 

“Oh god, what? What are you talking about?” 

“This!” Jay gestures to the bed as if it’s the trap Mike used to ensnare him. “You decided you could have me and do whatever you wanted because my mother told you this fucking story about me?” 

“I decided I could have you because I asked and you said yes!” 

“Bullshit,” Jay says, laughing meanly. He starts gathering clothes from his suitcase. 

“What the fuck, man,” Mike says. “Don’t do this to me right now, please.” 

“To you, right,” Jay says, back to him. “It’s always all about you and your feelings, Mike, that’s the only thing that matters.” 

He goes into the bathroom with his bundle of clothes and slams the door behind him. 

Mike stares at the wreckage from last night that’s spread across the floor: their ties, pants, shirts. They already look like untouchable artifacts from another world entirely.

Jay dresses quickly and hasn’t done his hair when he emerges. His face is bright red and his eyes are pure fury.

“I need to be alone for a minute,” Jay says. “So don’t follow me.” 

“Jay--”

“God, stop!” Jay brings his hands up to his ears as he walks toward the bedroom door, as if the sound of Mike’s voice is unbearable. “Enough! Leave me the fuck alone for a fucking second!”

Mike steps out of Jay’s way, feeling like a monster. That’s Jay’s evil magic trick, being like this and turning it around on Mike like he’s the problem. 

Wait, Mike wants to say, looking at the bed, eyes blurred over. Restart. Do over. 

He packs his things, hands shaking, and opens the blinds on the windows that overlook the backyard. The pool is perfectly still, a dozen or so palm fronds left behind by the storm floating on the surface. Mike feels storm-trashed himself, but he reminds himself how to fix this, how he did last time: find Jay, throw self at feet, don’t ask for an apology, devote rest of life to doing whatever is necessary to be allowed to stay near him. 

Mike isn’t even mad anymore by the time he goes downstairs. He’s just falling down a series of chutes that will eventually dump him at his lowest low if he doesn’t find a ladder and start climbing. Jay’s mother and Arnold are in the kitchen, throwing out food they didn’t consume per the rules of the rental. They tell Mike that Jay said he was going for a walk on the beach. 

Mike heads in that direction. Jay said not to follow him, but that was half an hour ago, or perhaps Mike’s sense of time is very distorted. He feels like he can’t even breathe right as he searches the beach for Jay. They’re supposed to leave for the airport in an hour. He can fix this in an hour. Last time it took like three minutes. 

Of course, last time they hadn’t spent the previous evening making each other come and, in Mike’s case, proposing marriage. And those three minutes came after five months of staying apart, not even talking, and Mike’s near death from the empty days that piled up around his ears until they were towering over him, blocking out the sun. 

He finds Jay sitting on the beach near an empty lifeguard chair. Workers dressed in white shirts and white shorts are setting up beach chairs out in front of the nearest beachfront hotel, part of some other resort in the distance. There’s nobody on this section of the beach, which is probably why Jay chose it.

Jay sees Mike coming and stands up. The look on his face is hard to interpret. He’s not scowling, and he looks a little sad, which is a good sign. Mike’s plan is to grab him and hug him and say he’s sorry, that he shouldn’t have brought up the fight like that and he’ll never mention it again if that’s what Jay wants. 

Jay steps back when Mike reaches for him. 

“Don’t,” Jay says. “Sorry, I just. I can’t do this. Not the way you want me to.”

Mike says nothing. He doesn’t want to move beyond this moment, to know what Jay means.

“I just--” Jay groans and pushes his hair back. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks at the ocean, then back at Mike. “I’m fucking exhausted, okay? I don’t, like, enjoy this the way other people do. The-- Wondering, and wanting things, and thinking with my dick. I don’t even know what we did in front of my fucking family at the wedding, last night.”

“It was nothing,” Mike says, a hopeful flicker lighting in his chest at the thought that this might only be about that. Maybe Jay is just embarrassed that he got a little drunk and let Mike-- what? “You sat in my lap, that’s all.”

“Jesus,” Jay says, wincing. “That’s-- Not me, and, fuck, we made out in front of that poor golf cart driver, too--”

“It was hardly making out! I kissed your ear--”

“Whatever it was, it’s not me! I don’t act like that! This whole thing is making me feel brainless and, like, pulled too thin. It’s like I’m not even myself anymore, I’m just some extension of you. I can’t be like this when we’re back in the real world, okay? It’s too much, it’s like a vacation from myself, but I can’t stay on vacation forever. I just want to feel normal again.”

Mike hears it then, though he can’t accept it. He’s being told that he’ll never have Jay the way he wants. 

“It’s like the Rainbow Connection,” Jay says, giving Mike the saddest look he’s ever seen on Jay’s face, or maybe anyone’s.

“It’s like the-- What now?”

“There’s this vision you have of us, and it’s cozy and easy and perfect, but. It’s an illusion, Mike. Okay? None of that shit’s easy for anyone and especially not for me. You want to believe I can change and be how you want me to, but I can’t. I get it, it’s out there, just out of reach, and it looks so real sometimes, like you could touch it if you got close enough, like it might be solid. I think about it, too, jesus, so much. But it’s not-- It’s not real.”

“You’re the realest fucking thing in my life,” Mike says, wanting to sink to his knees, clasp his hands, beg. “I don’t know what the fuck you would need for this to feel more real, I just? I swallowed your come, you slept-- In my arms, I know your whole family, I know your whole life. Jay, what. What the fuck more do you need from me, from anyone?”

There’s a moment when it looks like Jay will cave, or at least start crying. Then he shrugs it off and sighs like this is just another overdramatic Mike outburst that needs Jay’s sensible response. 

“I can’t handle the way you lift me up like I’m the greatest thing in the world and then tear me back down when you feel threatened,” Jay says. 

“I don’t do that,” Mike says, voice flat, chest hollow. “Or. I don’t mean to.” 

“I know you don’t mean to. But that’s how it feels to me.”

“I’m sorry, Jay, then-- Let me be the one who changes, okay? You’re perfect how you are--”

“Stop saying that! I’m not perfect for you, Mike! For fuck’s sake, I’m ruining your life!”

“Good! I fucking want you to ruin it, if the past few days are what ruining it looks like!”

“Yeah, well you’re really good at wanting things that are slowly killing you. And I’m good at not wanting them. I got so good at just. Being in my box, on my shelf. I want to go back.” 

“You want to be in a box on a shelf?” 

Mike remembers Jay snapping at him for thinking of him as a boy in a bubble. Apparently he was projecting. Jay is good at that, too.

“It’s more like I can’t not be in the box,” Jay says. “I just can’t. It’s too far to fall, I just. I look down, from this fucking shelf where I live, and I see you a million miles away, on this solid ground that I’ve never set foot on, and I can’t make myself jump. Even when I want to. I know you think you’ll catch me, but that’s not the way it works. Not for me, anyway.”

“Did you write all this,” Mike asks, deadpan, destroyed. “Like. Ahead of time.”

“Fuck you,” Jay says, but there’s no bite in it, just something more like apology. “Look, um. We need to leave for the airport soon. I gotta go pack up all the stuff.”

“That’s it?” Mike says, hating how certain he is that pulling Jay into his arms would fix everything and how he knows Jay won’t let him do that anymore: not now, not ever. “We’re just gonna, what? Go home? Go back to the shop and sit there next to each other and pretend this never happened?”

“Yeah, and it’s gonna fucking suck. Which is why we never should have done this. God, it’s my fault. This whole idea-- I knew--”

Jay shakes his head and starts to walk away. 

“I get it,” Mike says, before Jay can get very far. Jay turns back halfway, not looking at him but listening. “I blew it, okay. I guess I knew I would. It’s always gonna be the wrong place, wrong time. And you’re right. You scare the shit out of me and I get defensive. But, god, Jay. If you had ever let me? I would have treated you so right.”

Jay doesn’t debate this, though Mike suspects he doesn’t believe it. Whatever he thinks, he says nothing and walks off, determined as ever to be alone. Even when he’s surrounded by others, even when he’s right there at Mike’s side. Jay zipped something up inside himself long before he ever met Mike, and since then it’s been padlocked, bricked over, and paved with concrete. The suddenly good looks are like a park he built overtop that miles thick foundation: tempting, pretty, welcoming, but ultimately just a place to stroll through, not somewhere anyone could build a home.


	7. Chapter 7

Everyone is silent on the ride to the airport, and though Mike is sure that Jay has given his mother and Arnold no hint of what just happened between him and Mike, there’s a tension in the air that makes Mike think they both must at least sense that something is going on. 

“Well, it was a real nice time,” Jay’s mother finally says when no one has breathed a word for almost the full half hour it takes to reach the airport. 

“Sure was,” Arnold supplies helpfully when Mike and Jay say nothing. 

They say their goodbyes before getting in line for security, as Jay’s mother and Arnold aren’t flying out until five o’clock and are going to have a parting cocktail in the airport lobby before heading to their gate. Going through customs and immigration in addition to security is a pain in the ass that Mike is unfamiliar with, and every step of the process makes him feel stupid.

“You two together?” the TSA agent at the passport station asks when Mike walks forward and Jay hesitates.

“How do you mean?” Mike asks, wanting to die.

“Traveling together,” the man says, snapping this at Mike like he’s an idiot. 

“Yes,” Jay says when Mike still doesn’t know how to answer. 

They stand before the agent and present their passports. 

“How long were you in the country?” he asks.

“Four days,” Jay says. 

Mike makes a noise under his breath, unable to believe it was only that long. The agent gives him a look, asks them if they have any fruit in their bags and if they spent any time around farm animals. He gives them their passports back and waves them away when they say no to both questions. 

They get to their gate almost an hour before the scheduled departure time. Mike isn’t sure if he should even sit near Jay, but it seems weirder not to. Jay puts his headphones on and stares at his phone, watching some movie. He has a kind of wilted, anxious energy that makes Mike want to protect him even now, while they’re not speaking to each other. Mike just sits beside him in angry silence, hating how much he wants to put his arm around Jay, kiss his cheek, get him even closer.

The gate is busy, loud, every sound irritating Mike more than the last. He considers buying some overpriced headphones from a kiosk, since he didn’t think to bring any, then has a better idea. He goes up to the desk at the gate and waits in line, pretending not to notice that Jay keeps glancing over at him, clearly wondering what Mike is doing.

When it’s finally Mike’s turn to speak to the gate agent, he asks if he can change his assigned seat on the plane. She says no.

“It’s a full flight, sir. We can’t re-assign seats at the gate. You’ll have to ask someone to trade with you once you’re on board.” 

“Okay, sure, yeah, only--” Mike checks over his shoulder to make sure Jay is still well out of earshot. “It’s just, um. If I can’t change seats I’m gonna have to sit next to this guy who broke my heart so bad that it annihilated like ninety-five percent of my soul eleven years ago, and this morning he decided to come for the last five percent and grind it to dust under his shoe, so. That’s the situation, please help me?”

The desk attendant stares at Mike for a moment, then follows his eyes when he checks again to make sure Jay isn’t looking in his direction.

“That guy?” the attendant says. 

“Yes. I know he looks sweet and innocent but he’s actually a heartless demon, I’ve learned. Again.” 

“I wish I could help you,” she says. “But I’d get in big trouble. It’s against policy, and my manager would find out.” 

“Right.” Mike moans and puts his head down on the countertop for a moment, trying to gather his strength. When he lifts his head, of course Jay is looking over at him, frowning. He jerks his gaze away from Mike’s when their eyes meet. “Oh, god,” Mike says, turning back to the gate agent. “I’m not going to survive this.”

“Sure you are,” she says. “You’ll find somebody else, you’ll see.”

“No, unfortunately. I won’t. I’ve been in love with that demon from hell for like fifteen years, and the situation has only gone from bad to worse.”

“Oh, geez. Sorry, mister. But, ah. I do have other people waiting behind you, so. Good luck?”

Mike wanders away. He walks as slowly as possible toward the empty seat beside Jay, who is looking at him as he approaches, then back at his phone when Mike sits beside him. Mike glances over to see what Jay is watching. It’s something with murder, of course, and blood. 

They don’t speak to each other before boarding or after they’re seated together on the plane, listening to the usual flight safety crap. Jay is messing with the mini TV that faces his seat, browsing through movies, his headphones plugged into it already. Mike hates how miserably glad he is to be sitting this close to Jay, that just the nearness of him is comforting even while Mike dies inside for not being able to touch him. He would give up a lot to be able to reach over and put his hand on Jay’s leg during takeoff, or to slump down and rest his head on Jay’s shoulder. He has to remind himself that things are never going back to the way they were on that island. All Mike had to do was bring up the fight and the memory of it wrecked everything. 

But, no. That’s not true. It was the fight that wrecked everything, back then. They just never fixed it the way they pretended they had.

It happened because of a girl, oddly enough. Jay said he was going to bring someone he was ‘seeing’ to Mike’s place for their usual bad movie night with a few other friends, and when he said ‘her name is Kelly,’ Mike said, unwisely but unable to stop himself:

“Oh, yeah? That’s funny, this whole time I thought you were gay.” 

The way Jay’s face changed confirmed for Mike that he’d been right, and also that bringing it up like that was a reeeeeeeally bad idea. 

“Why would you think that?” Jay asked. “I never said that. What gave you that idea? We’ve talked about girls being hot. When have I ever talked about a guy being hot? I haven’t. So I don’t know where you’re getting that from? Like, what? Huh? Why?”

He was getting worked up, talking fast and turning red, also glowering like Mike had brought a knife to a gun fight and was about to find out what a good shot Jay was.

Mike almost confided in him then: look, sorry, I’m bi myself and it’s not a big deal to me regardless, but Jay was giving Mike his unblinking psycho killer stare, the one that made his colorless eyes burn like a weapon that was powering up to fire, and at that point Mike had zero practice at telling people about his sexuality, so he didn’t feel safe, as the kids would say, and didn’t say anything about his own deal. For this and several other reasons he wouldn’t tell Jay that he was attracted to guys as well as girls for about ten years. 

Jay got closed off after that but let the subject drop. Mike felt guilty about it but figured Jay would get over it. He was just sensitive about this, and apparently going through something, something that included attempting to date a woman, which Mike was actually very curious to see in action.

The night of the viewing party, Jay showed up in an obviously shitty mood with a surprisingly cute girl who was also very sweet: Kelly, who laughed at Mike’s jokes and smiled easily. Jay was overly attentive to her every need but otherwise there was no indication that the two were together in a romantic context, except that Jay sat next to her on the couch-- Not touching her in any way, Mike noted. 

Mike started to get drunk, which was his first mistake. Later he was pretty trashed but still cognizant, talking to Kelly in the kitchen, and in stormed Jay. He made a beeline for Kelly, pointedly not looking at Mike.

“We’re leaving,” Jay said to Kelly. “Get your stuff.”

She laughed and then frowned, seeing he was serious.

“Wait, really?” she said. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“We’re only one movie in,” Mike added. They usually watched at least two, often three.

“ _Fuck_ you,” Jay said to Mike, whirling on him with a sudden, spitting rage so intense that Mike could only laugh nervously in response, which was his second mistake. 

Jay got red-faced, shaking with rage, as if Mike had slapped him.

“What the hell?” Mike said. “You’re mad at me?”

“I’m fucking sick of you, more like,” Jay said. 

“Whoa, hey,” Kelly said. “Jay, c’mon. You’re drunk. Don’t do this now.”

“This?” Mike said, not taking his eyes off Jay. His heart started slamming. “What’s ‘this’?”

“I don’t know, Mike, why don’t you tell me? I can’t even bring a girl to a fucking party for fucking once without you trying to fuck her?”

“Whoa, what?” Kelly laughed. “Jay--”

“I’m not stupid!” Jay said, to her, in a way that made Mike jump backward in shock even more than Jay’s random fury toward him had.

“That’s debatable,” she said, glaring at him. “What the hell is your problem?”

“Him!” Jay said, glaring at Mike. “My supposedly best friend, he’s my fucking problem and has been for years, and I’m so fucking done with this shit that it’s not even funny.”

“Are you high?” Mike asked, trying to mount a defense of himself but still too worried about Jay apparently having some kind of emotional breakdown to even really feel insulted yet. “What is going on? Let’s-- Come here, come talk to me--”

“Nope, no, I’m done with that shit, done talking to you, I’m done with this whole fucking friendship. I should have told you off years ago, you arrogant, pathetic asshole.”

That was the first blow that really landed, when Mike started to feel like this was actually happening, his shock receding and his heart already giving him damage reports that were critical, hull breached and craft compromised.

“I’m arrogant and pathetic?” Mike said, huffing. Kelly had left the kitchen at that point, and Mike didn’t blame her. Jay looked like he was ready to kill someone, namely Mike. “Okay, what? What the hell did I do to--”

“You’re ruining my fucking life!” Jay said, shouting. 

Several people who were now watching from the living room tittered with anxious laughter, and someone gasped.

“Me?” Mike said, still feeling slow, like he was missing some pages from a script. “What-- When? How?”

“Of course you’re going to act like you don’t understand, like you’re so innocent. Bullshit, you motherfucker. You get off on making me feel like shit, it’s like your sad little hobby.”

“Huh?” Mike wanted to hit him then, a little. It felt like physical violence might improve the situation, or maybe would just hurt less than hearing Jay say all this and seem to mean it. He didn’t even seem that drunk. 

“Okay, Jay, let’s go,” Kelly said, returning with her coat and purse over her arm. “This is not--”

“You know what, no,” Jay said, glaring at her. “I’m not going anywhere with you, forget it. After I confided in you about all this shit, this is what you do? All he has to do is look at you twice and you want his dick, really? No, fuck this, I’m leaving, I’ll go, and you two can have fun fucking each other when I’m gone, go for it. I don’t give a shit anymore.”

“Hey!” Mike shouted, drawing Jay’s razor sharp gaze back to him. “Don’t yell at her! You got a problem with me, fine, but she didn’t do anything. We were just talking, you lunatic!”

“Just, hey, fair warning?” Jay said, looking back to Kelly, who was teary-eyed already. “He’s a fucking sociopath who just wants to get trashed every night and sleep with whoever’s stupid enough to put out for him, so don’t expect to, like, get a call from him in the morning or anything.”

“What the fuck?” Mike shouted, shoving Jay’s shoulder. “Don’t talk to her like that!”

“You don’t even know her,” Jay said, doing a fake-laugh thing that made him seem like he’d gone full demonic possession, totally evil all of a sudden. Only his eyes were wet, too. 

“Kinda starting to feel like I don’t know you, actually,” Mike said. He felt his eyes burning as if in response to Jay’s oncoming tears, and hated Jay for activating his grudging sympathy even then. 

“That’s fucking right you don’t,” Jay said, pointing his finger in Mike’s face. “You just see me as this little loser who you keep around to prop up your enormous fucking ego. It’s how you treat everyone, eventually, like they’re all just there to be the butt of your stupid jokes and make sure you don’t wander into traffic when you drink yourself half to death. I don’t know why I put up with it for so long. I’m done babysitting you, done putting up with all your abuse, done acting like you haven’t just turned into a bigger and bigger piece of shit ever since film school went nowhere. Fuck off forever, Mike. Don’t ever talk to me again.”

So that was their fight. 

Jay left the party alone. Mike stood there in the kitchen feeling like he couldn’t move, think, or feel anything except for a level of betrayal he hadn’t even known was possible, like his skin had just been stripped off and he was a bloody collection of exposed bone and organs that wouldn’t hold together if he tried to take a single step away from this situation. Kelly cried a little, and eventually someone drove her home. Mike got blackout drunk and woke up on the floor of his bedroom, both eyes so puffy from sobbing that it looked like he’d gotten punched in the face, which felt accurate. 

Mike quit the VCR repair shop via a voicemail to management that morning. He booked a flight to California to visit his sister and packed like he was never coming back, told his roommates to find a new one. If Jay wanted him gone, he would be so gone. He would disappear completely. He felt like someone had erased him already anyway, like Jay had.

He got blackout drunk again on the plane and doesn’t remember being picked up by his sister at the airport or the drive to her house, just that once he was there he used her computer to check his email and had one from Jay. The subject line was: “An Explanation.”

Not ‘sorry,’ not ‘where are you,’ not ‘good god you left the entire state over this?’ 

Mike has the email memorized to this day, and he runs over it hatefully for the thousandth or so time in his mind, staring into the aisle of the plane so he can’t see Jay from even the corner of his eye. 

_Mike,_

_I have to apologize for how I acted the other night. I’ve talked to Kelly about it and she’s forgiven me, because she is an angel and obviously too good for me, but I’m glad to say she and I can still be friends after how I acted. She is privy to certain information that you don’t have and which I’m not going to give you now or ever but suffice to say that she knows more about entirely what is going on with me and why I lost my shit that night. And you were right that I never should have talked to her like that or dragged her into it at all. So for that I am sorry, to both you and her._

_The fact is that I have been unhappy around you for a while now and it all just came ripping out of me that night. Which is really embarrassing, but I guess I knew it was going to happen eventually. I can’t be around you anymore and I don’t want to talk to you at least for a while, if ever again, because you bring out the worst in me and make me feel like shit. I don’t know if you do it on purpose all the time, but I know at least some of the time you do, and I can’t forgive that or allow myself to put up with it. It’s been slowly ruining my life for a long time and I feel better already having said some of what I said, even though I also feel bad about it because I should have been a lot calmer and not drinking when I did it._

_So you can respond to this or not, but I wanted to explain a little now that I’m calmer about the whole thing. Sorry if I went a little below the belt about film school and everything, but honestly you never pull punches with me so I guess fair’s fair._

_Have a nice life, I guess. Or don’t, I don’t really care anymore. Sorry shit got so fucked up, but hopefully you can see why now and not treat other people like this in the future._

_Jay_

That email was pretty much the pin that popped the last tiny balloon of hope for the future that was floating weakly in Mike’s soul region. His rage toward Jay was immediate and enormous. He had never hated someone so much in his life.

He wrote at least a dozen different versions of a frothing, furious reply, wherein he dissected all of Jay’s failings in detail and completely dismantled him down to the psychological bedrock, but he didn’t send any of them. He didn’t want to give Jay the pleasure of being right about him.

Because Mike did worry, a lot, during those god awful five months from hell, that some of what Jay said about him could maybe sort of be right. It wasn’t the first time he’d worried about inheriting his father’s talent for making people he supposedly loved feel like shit and not even noticing that he was doing it. Or caring.

He orders a beer from the cart when the stewardess comes down the aisle, and his hand is shaking when he takes it from her. 

Jay asks for water, no ice, which makes Mike want to snarl at him. He doesn’t look at Jay, doesn’t say anything, just goes on staring at whatever movie is playing on his mini TV screen while he dives back into the horrors of the past in his mind. 

Those five months: Mike doesn’t like to think about them. He’d rather relive the fight, or even the reading of that email, which still feels like the absolute rock bottom of his entire life, than think about the empty agony of his time spent in Oakland, haunting the corners of his sister’s house like a ghost. 

He drank a lot. He talked about Jay a lot, always spitting with anger and calling him every name imaginable. He badgered their friends back home for intel on him, but they all said Jay had ghosted them, that as far as they could tell all he did was go to work and hang out alone in his room at his mother’s house.

Mike stalked Jay online and left mean comments under a variety of usernames that he created for the purpose of criticizing Jay’s posts. Jay knew it was him and asked him to stop via a mutual friend, which sent Mike into a renewed tailspin of self-hating rage. 

Finally he had to go back to Milwaukee to sell his car, as his ex-roommates were complaining that it was taking up space in the driveway. He could have technically done this from afar, but by then he was tired of feeling like the walking dead, always on the verge of wanting to puke from the combination of anxiety, regret, righteous fury, and self-doubt that seemed to comprise him from head to foot, leaving no room for anything else. He felt like he had to face Milwaukee, if not Jay, though if he was honest with himself he knew as soon as he got on the plane that he was going back not just to see Jay but to beg for his forgiveness like an idiot with no pride. He didn’t care: he was an idiot, had no pride left, and spent every fucking second of every day thinking about Jay and what he’d said anyway, so why not go hear more of it? 

He stayed with his ex-roommates, on the couch, as they’d rented his old room out to someone else. They were incredulous when Mike asked them to arrange it so that he and Jay would be in the same place in a seemingly incidental way. Mike had to tell them four times that he wasn’t joking or playing a prank. 

“What are you going to do?” his friend Jon asked. “Kill him?”

“I wish,” Mike said, because what he was actually going to do was probably even more dangerous, ill-advised, and soul-sucking. 

The next day, things went according to plan: Mike accompanied his friends to a daytime barbecue at another friend’s house, and Jay was there. Mike was happy to see that Jay looked like utter shit. He was happy to see Jay in general, and even more so when Jay gave him a look from across the backyard like he was terrified of Mike.

Good, Mike thought, deciding to go with that. Something resembling confidence assembled at the center of his chest as he crossed the yard, eyes locked on Jay’s. This would be the new way of things: Mike would do whatever was necessary to get Jay talking to him again, and going forward Mike would be the cold one, the one who protected himself at all costs and maybe one day finally snapped, but first things first. 

“Hey,” he said when he was standing in front of Jay, close enough to loom over him like a shadow, or the ghost of someone Jay had violently murdered. “You look terrible.” 

Jay laughed nervously and looked down into his cup, then up into Mike’s eyes. The guy Jay had been talking to quickly made himself scarce, and Mike could feel the stares of everyone at the party on his back, all of them not-discreetly watching to see what would happen. Their fight was legendary by then, much talked about. 

“That’s how you open?” Jay said, eyebrows going up. He was smiling, though, mostly in his eyes. “With an insult? Bold.”

“Just being honest.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re good at that.”

Jay was sarcastic, as if Mike was actually a huge liar. But he didn’t look mad, not like he had that night. There was something newly soft in his eyes, a begging thing that made Mike want to just pick him up and carry him away, explaining on his way out that he’d come for what was his and would be leaving with it now.

“I know I look terrible,” Jay muttered, glancing down into his empty cup again. It was a good thing he’d already had a few, or he would have probably been pointier, more on guard and ready to strike. Instead, he sighed hugely and gave Mike that soft, pleading look again. “I’ve been, uh. Not so good. Lately.”

“Me too.”

“That was all, you know--” Jay blew his breath out and slapped the bottom of his cup against his palm, shrugged. He was staring at Mike’s shoulder, steadily turning red across his cheeks. “Just. It’s not entirely your fault if I take things too personally.”

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Mike said, deadpan but serious. Jay’s gaze snapped back up to his, and he was clearly surprised. Mike almost regretted the apology, because maybe Jay had been about to deliver a better one to him. But Mike’s was real, regardless. “I never wanted you to feel like shit. Ever. I think you might be the only person in the world I really respect. Unfortunately. Because I hate everything about my life when you’re not in it, turns out.”

“Yeah?” Jay said, breathing his out brokenly, and just loud enough so only Mike would hear.

Jay didn’t say _me too_ , but it was there in his eyes, so much relief that Mike wanted to scoop some up and smear it on himself. 

“Hey, so,” Mike said. He cocked his head, shrugged, remembered his plan. “Fetch me a drink and it’s all water under the bridge.”

He was testing this new dynamic, waiting to see if Jay would do what he asked.

And Jay did, with a smile.

And now it’s eleven years later and they’re back to not talking to each other, both staring dead-eyed at the little TVs that are flashing movies at them from the back of the seats in front of them. Jay takes dainty little sips from his plastic cup of water. Mike gulps from his beer and thinks about their first kiss, in that cheesy restaurant, after Jay finally let himself tip over onto Mike and sleep against his shoulder. 

This is going to be a billion times harder than the last time they fought, because this time Mike knows what it’s like to have Jay in his bed and in his arms and sleeping on his shoulder, and he might get his friend back like he did last time, but he’ll never get his little fake boyfriend who he’s actually in love with back, and now he knows he can’t live without him either. 

The plane lands in Milwaukee. It’s nighttime, almost ten o’clock, and it must have snowed recently because the mounds of it that frame everything look taller than they did when they left. The dash display on Mike’s car tells him it’s five degrees outside as he pulls onto the highway, Jay silent beside him in the passenger seat and staring out the window. 

“God,” Jay says in a creaky little voice. He sounds so tired. “I fucked everything up. Again.”

“No,” Mike says.

“No?”

“I’m the one who fucked up. I pushed you into all that stuff, made you try it. I’m an actual monster, when you think about it.”

“No, hey, Mike--” Jay reaches for him, then pulls his hand back, thinking better of it. Mike can hear it when he swallows heavily. “I wanted. All that, I liked-- Everything, just. Give me a little credit, okay? I would have told you no if I didn’t want to try something. It’s just. Complicated. Fuck!” 

Jay turns and punches the window of Mike’s car so hard that Mike is a little surprised it doesn’t crack, then moans and hugs his aching fist against his chest. 

“Never mind,” Jay says, mumbling. “Forget it. Just don’t hate yourself. It’s not you-- oh, god. It’s me. I keep hearing myself saying this cliche shit and it’s making me want to die, so. I’ll stop talking now.”

“Kay,” Mike says, hands very tight on the wheel, eyes pointed forward at the road.

They reach Jay’s apartment building, and Mike isn’t even sure he can look at Jay without breaking down into pathetic tears, so he doesn’t say goodbye when Jay climbs out. Jay grabs his suitcase from the backseat and bolts like he can’t get away fast enough. Mike has a new refrain that will ring in his ears for the rest of his life, alongside _fucking sociopath_ and _make sure you don’t wander into traffic when you drink yourself half to death_. Jay saying _leave me the fuck alone_ the way he did before he stormed out of that bedroom is gonna stick, he can feel it.

The liquor store is closed and Mike has no beer in his fridge. He figures this is probably for the best, as getting drunk while he feels like this could go real bad, real fast. He gets into bed, still dressed, and stares at the ceiling, trying to imagine how he’s possibly going to get through the day tomorrow. He supposes he could leave again, like last time. His sister still lives out in California. 

He closes his eyes and tries to comfort himself with good memories that hurt, too: Jay in his lap after the reception, the little smile he gave Mike just before the ceremony started, the way he curled in on himself when he slept and seemed to love having Mike wrapped around him like that, like they were designed to fit together. His adorably intense hatred of pickles. Mike supposes that isn’t lost, anyway. He’s going to have to relearn how to love Jay from afar. It feels impossible. He falls asleep, despairing. 

His dreams are fucking terrible, but he anticipated this and knows they’re dreams even while he’s in them, is able to wake himself up when things get really bad. But then he’s back in the real world, which also isn’t great.

In the morning, he dresses in his Lightning Fast shirt as usual. They still wear them as a kind of joke, and suddenly it feels like a joke at Mike’s expense. He leaves for work in a miasma of dread, bracing himself to get to the shop and find a voicemail from Jay saying he quits and he’s moving away forever, byyyyye.


	8. Chapter 8

Jay is there when Mike arrives. It’s almost ten o’clock in the morning but feels earlier than that, the skies overhead darkish with heavy clouds. Jay is dutifully wearing his khaki Lightning Fast shirt, an unzipped hoodie pulled over its short sleeves. He’s dutifully seated in his usual spot behind the counter, and dutifully gives Mike a heartbroken look when their eyes meet. Heartbreak aside, he looks well-rested, like he slept okay last night. His hair is perfect.

“Any customers yet today?” Mike asks, lingering near the door, unsure how to proceed. How did they do this last time? They just ignored it all instantly, so here goes nothing, take two.

“No customers,” Jay says. He’s got both hands hugged around his Starbucks cup as if he’s drawing heat from it. The shop is drafty, and the cold outside always sneaks in. 

“Any calls?” Mike asks.

“Nope.” 

“Business as usual, then,” Mike says, wishing he felt numb. Instead he feels jittery, like he’s going to puke, and also like Jay is looking at him funny, with some kind of longing. Mike really doesn’t need _that_ shit right now, truly.

He takes his seat beside Jay, wishing he’d thought to get coffee. At least Jay has something to do with his hands, also his mouth. He’s sipping from his coffee every few seconds, saying nothing and staring at the door of the shop like he’s willing a customer to come in and give them something to do.

Of course no one comes. 

Mike picks up a magazine and pretends to read it. Jay plays on his phone and sighs a lot. He gives Mike periodic long looks that seem to be asking him to do something. Mike pretends not to notice. 

“It’s eleven o’clock,” Jay says, when they’ve passed a miserable hour in this fashion. “Is that too early for lunch?”

“Nope. What have we got?”

“Let’s see.” Jay gets up and goes to the fridge in the back room. Mike stays up front and listens to him digging through the freezer, icy plastic bags crinkling. “Calzones,” Jay calls out. “Looks like-- Yep, that’s all we got. How long have these been in here?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mike says, half hoping that eating one will kill him. “Heat one up for me, yeah?”

When Mike hears the microwave beeping he gets up and goes back to eat a defrosted calzone, though he has no appetite and can’t imagine wanting anything less than shovelling food into his mouth right now. Jay pulls the plate with the steaming calzone from the microwave and sets it on their little table. Mike watches in miserable silence as Jay uses a plastic knife to cut the calzone in half, cheesy innards spilling out. 

Jay has tears in his eyes when he looks up, and his lips are twitching like he’s trying to hold something in.

“Split this with me, okay?” Jay says, his voice all fucked up. 

Mike loves him so much. He wants to get down on his knees and beg: what, what? What do I do now? Everything I have is yours already, there’s nothing left to take.

“Sure,” Mike says, glad at least that his voice is steady. He doesn’t feel like crying, more like throwing himself off a bridge. 

They sit at the table and eat the calzone. It’s too hot, burning Mike’s tongue, but he takes big bites of it anyway. Jay mostly just saws at his with a knife and fork and loses his shit as discreetly as he can, fat teardrops splattering onto the crust of the calzone while he sobs in little jerks of his shoulders and wipes at his wet face with the overlong sleeves of his hoodie, sniffling. 

“Goddammit, Jay,” Mike finally says, when he’s managed to finish his half of the calzone, which is sitting in his stomach like a rock. “What do you need? You need me to leave? Am I making it worse, just sitting here?”

“No.” Jay wipes at his face again and puts his shoulders back. He’s mostly stopped crying but his face is all red and raw-looking now. “If you left again I would literally die.” 

“Okay, then, I won’t--” 

“Last time. I just. You don’t even know. Or maybe you do, now. Half of it, anyway. You know why I did it, back then, right? Why I picked that fight and said all that evil shit to you?”

“Uhh, I have a few theories.”

“Is one of them that I was so in love with you and in denial about it that it was making me lose my mind? And I wanted to hate you for it and tried really hard to? Because that’s why.”

Mike nods, because, yes. That was his leading theory.

“I still can’t stand how much control you have over how I feel about-- Everything, myself, I don’t know.” Jay sniffles again, shrugs. “It’s a nightmare.”

“Ditto.”

Jay snorts.

“Oh, please,” he says.

“Fuck your ‘oh, please,’” Mike says. “You had it wrong in your stupid metaphor, too, okay? You’re not just up there somewhere above me, you’re the whole fucking sky I live under. Whatever’s going on up there is what I have to deal with down below. And, yeah, it’s mostly just. You, not jumping. What the hell can I do? Stand down here and stare up at you for the rest of my life, I guess.” 

Jay laughs a little when Mike stops talking, but he’s also wet-eyed again. He blinks it away and looks down at his uneaten calzone. 

“I miss you,” he says, mumbling. 

“I’m right fucking here.”

“No, I mean. I did, last night. In bed.”

“Great, well. I don’t know what to tell you about that, except that I will relocate my entire life to your bed if you want me to. But you know that, and you don’t want it--”

“Yeah, I do. C’mere.”

“Come where? Where do you want me, Jay, in your lap? On my knees at your fucking feet? How about you come _here_ , if you want me, for once.”

Jay flashes him a petulant look. Mike absorbs it like a gut punch, but then it feels good, a jab of hot interest sinking lower. When Jay gets up with a grunt, like he’s doing this under mild protest, Mike scoots his chair away from the table and sits back, like: that’s right. Get your ass over here.

Mike isn’t sure what he’s really expecting Jay to do: now, ever. He opens his arms and pulls Jay close as soon as he’s in reach, down into his lap. Jay wraps both arms around Mike’s neck and hides his face against his throat, sniffling again. Mike moans and holds him tighter. Poor Jay. His face is so hot against Mike’s skin. Mike can’t let himself feel relieved yet. He just lets Jay hide, even while he’s in Mike’s arms, until he’s ready to do whatever comes next. 

“Mike,” Jay says when he lifts his face. His eyes are wet again and all the shields are torn down, everything on display. It’s so much, finally seeing him like this, that Mike almost breaks down, too. “I’m sorry,” Jay says. He pushes out a choppy little breath and puts his hands on Mike’s shoulders. “I’m really sorry I did that, back then.”

“It was my fault,” Mike blurts, and he almost laughs, because wow was that not what he expected to hear himself say if Jay ever really apologized. “I shouldn’t have, ah. Confronted you, with things you didn’t want to talk about yet. That’s what it was about, right?”

Jay nods glumly and puts his face against Mike’s cheek, sighs. 

“You were the first one I really couldn’t reason away,” he says, mumbling. “Not the first guy I wanted, but you weren’t some character in a movie or somebody I could forget about after a few days of trying not to think about it. With you there was no fucking gray area, and holy shit was that not in my plan for my life. Not even just the guy thing. The way you just moved in and took over my whole fucking brain. I never cared about what other people thought of me, not really, but you. Then came you, I guess. I was sure you just saw me as a joke.” 

“Jesus.” Mike kisses Jay’s ear without thinking, not sure he’s really allowed to. Jay doesn’t protest, just sits back and meets Mike’s eyes again. “Well,” Mike says. “I hope it became obvious that I actually took you pretty fucking seriously when I exploded my whole life because you told me you didn’t like me anymore.”

“Not really,” Jay says, and he grins at the answering look of disbelief on Mike’s face. “I was so arrogant when I was a kid, I thought I had everyone figured out. I thought you were just running away because I made you confront the truth about yourself.” He rolls his eyes, snorts. “Which was, you know. Just a little bit ironic. Considering.”

“I mean, you weren’t wrong about all of it,” Mike says, muttering.

Jay shakes his head and pets Mike’s cheeks, brushing his fingertips over his stubble, soft.

“Just the thought of you knowing how fucked up I really was when you left,” Jay says, staring down at Mike’s lips. “God, I would have self-immolated if I thought you’d found out about that, back then. That day when I had to call my mom, jesus. I wanted to fucking die, thinking about-- I guess that was when it really hit me that I’d accomplished my goal, that I’d really hurt you bad. And it felt like the worst thing I’d ever done, it _was_ the worst thing I’d ever done, and you were gone, and--”

“I was never really gone,” Mike says. “Didn’t everyone tell you how I was always asking about you?”

“They told me you fucking hated me,” Jay says, sniffing out a little laugh. “Which, you know. That was part of my plan, too. I’d make you hate me, and then I wouldn’t have to be in love with you anymore. Like all it would take was you not smiling at me ever again, because it felt like that was what was doing it, like you were casting this evil spell on me every time you met my eyes and grinned. But getting rid of you didn’t fucking work, obviously. I was more obsessed with you than ever, when you weren’t around to piss me off and make me want you. And then you came back, and it was like someone switched me back on again, like. Just seeing you looking at me from across that guy’s backyard brought me back to life. And it was scary as shit, but better than feeling dead inside. I thought, okay, as long as he’s here, as long as I have some part of him, it’s enough. It has to be enough.” 

“I tell myself that pretty much every fucking day of my life, Jay. About you.”

“That’s not--” Jay looks up into Mike’s face again, frowning a little, distressed. “That can’t be true.”

“Why the hell not? Look at me, look at what I’ve done with my life. Everything I do is about how I can keep you with me, in whatever way you’ll let me.” 

Jay’s gaze sinks down to Mike’s lips, and he makes a soft noise at the back of his throat when Mike reaches up and swipes his thumbs across Jay’s cheeks, though they’re not currently wet. Mike would have licked Jay’s tears up if he’d thought Jay would let him. He would be gushing about how much he loved seeing Jay cry if he knew Jay wouldn’t take it the wrong way. Maybe it’s a little mean, loving the way he looks when he’s wrecked like this, but it doesn’t come from a hateful place. Mike just needed to know it was possible. 

“You were so good at it,” Jay says when he meets Mike’s eyes again. 

“Good at what,” Mike asks, as gently as he can. He’s stroking the small of Jay’s back, wanting to push his bulky hoodie off. 

“Being my-- Ah. I mean, showing everyone, my family. They all thought. You know, that you were so good for me.” 

“It’s not exactly hard for me to act like I’m in love with you. Comes pretty naturally.”

Jay smiles and leans in for a kiss. It’s soft and hesitant, like it’s the first time all over again, and Mike lets Jay direct it, lets Jay lick timidly into his mouth. He sneaks his hand up under Jay’s sweatshirt and then the Lightning Fast shirt, too, needing to feel the heat of his skin underneath it all. Jay gasps for the feeling of Mike’s hand on him. Mike moans, also overcome, because they’re here at the shop, back in the real world, and touching Jay here feels like proof that they didn’t mutually dream everything that happened on the island. Mike could swear Jay is thinking, at the same moment as Mike, that Mike has been inside him a little already, that was real. Jay shivers and deepens the kiss, his arms wrapping around Mike’s neck. 

“Wait,” Mike says, pulling back. Jay grunts in protest and tries for another kiss, but Mike holds him steady. “Hang on, just-- Are you going to freak out about this again in two hours? And give me another speech about how you’re, like, an untouchable elf who’s too magical to be held in the arms of a mortal man?”

Jay laughs, snickering and red-faced and perfect. Mike never needs anybody to laugh at his jokes again, as long as Jay does. It’s like a thousand bonus points every time. 

“I never said that, Mike,” Jay says, trying to make his face serious. “I said-- I don’t know what was coming out of my mouth, actually.”

“You got real poetic and talked about the Muppets.”

“Eugh. Yeah. I don’t know, you scared me. It was like you wanted to drag me back to how I felt during that fight, and that whole time in my life when we weren’t talking. Jesus, I never want to feel like that again.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I know that must have come out of nowhere for you, back then. I know it was, like, traumatic. God, and what if you hadn’t come back? I didn’t think you would, back then. I still have nightmares that you never came home, sometimes.”

“I have nightmares about it, too. But that’s the illusion. This is is what’s real. You, here, in my lap. I’m never going fucking anywhere unless you tell me to. And please don’t, please-- Just please tell me you’re serious? About being with me, here in the real world? Because I can’t go through the whole thing again, Jay, is the point. So don’t be in my lap unless you want to stay here.”

Jay kisses him in answer, which figures. Mike accepts it, licks between Jay’s lips and sighs for the taste of him. Jay tastes like coffee, didn’t manage to get a single bite of the calzone in his mouth. 

“What changed?” Mike asks when he pulls back again, needing to be sure. “Between the beach and the calzone?”

“I don’t know,” Jay says, which is nowhere near good enough, and he seems to see this on Mike’s face and accept it. “I was miserable and wanted to go back to the way we were the night of the wedding. Even though it was scary to be like that and just-- Let go, and let everyone see that I had. You know, I. Kinda like being scared. Also, uh. While the calzone was microwaving, my sister sent me-- Here, I’ll show you.”

Jay digs out his phone and shows Mike a text from Lizzie that includes a picture of Mike and Jay on the sailboat, Jay half in Mike’s lap and laughing about something, looking in the other direction while Mike peers up at him like a lovesick fool, grinning like he’s got the whole world in the palm of his hand as long as he can stay where he is, with his arm around Jay. 

_Found this when I was going through my phone pics_ , is Lizzie’s accompanying message. _And don’t worry, I’m not gonna post it anywhere!! But just look how much he loves you, so cute :’)_

“She’s not wrong,” Mike says, looking up at Jay like that again, now. 

“God, it never changed for me,” Jay says. He drops his phone on the table and grabs Mike’s face with both hands. “Not ever, not even a little, I always thought it would fade out, or you’d meet someone else, or I would, but it was just-- I think that’s why I tried to hate you. Because it was like you snapped your fingers and you had me. Without even trying. You just looked at me one day and I thought, oh, god, oh no. What can I do to not feel like this. Anything, I’ll do anything. But the answer was nothing, there was nothing I could do.”

“I really would take such good care of you,” Mike says, his voice getting a little tight. “If you’d let me.”

“There’s no hypothetical, you’re doing it, it’s happening.”

They kiss again, more hotly, and Jay slides his leg across Mike’s lap so he’s straddling him, arching his back and starting to make Mike hard with his squirming and panted breath. Mike pushes the hoodie off and puts both hands up under Jay’s shirt, grips his waist. He can feel Jay getting hard, too, rubbing against him. 

“How are your hands always warm?” Jay asks when he pulls back. He’s still holding Mike’s face, thumbs pressed under his jaw. “Even here, even in winter, you’re always, you’re so--”

Jay’s face gets redder. He shakes his head and leans in to kiss the smug grin off of Mike’s mouth. 

“Holy shit, it came true,” Mike says when he starts to think about moving this to the old couch on the other side of the room. 

“What?” Jay says, dazed-looking, pupils fat. 

“Our get-together story. It’s happening, Jay, this is it. We’re making out in the back room at the store and confessing our feelings.” 

Jay snorts and rubs his face against Mike’s, grinning. When he pulls back he takes a deep breath, his expression getting serious in a way that worries Mike a little. 

“I should tell you, um,” Jay says, worrying him more, “I’m extremely high maintenance.” 

Mike throws his head back and laughs harder than he has in years, maybe harder than he ever has before in his entire life.

Jay looks none too pleased when Mike tips his head forward again, still laughing, unable to stop.

“Jay,” he manages to say. “Um. I don’t know how to tell you this, but. No shit. I’ve noticed.”

“No, I’m-- Stop!” Jay punches Mike’s chest weakly with one fist. “I know you think you know that already, ha-ha, but you have no idea. You’re in big fucking trouble if you really want to take care of me like you say.”

“Oh god, what? You think it’s news to me that you’re some kinda mystical creature who needs to devour my heart and soul for sustenance? Hello, Jay, you already did. I haven’t had those things in years. Check your quest inventory, ‘cause they’ve been in your possession for a long time, you demon. Can’t believe it took you this long to also use my body for your sadistic pleasures.”

“Did you write that?” Jay asks dryly, smiling a little. “Like. Ahead of time?”

“No, I’m just amazing at ad-libbing, you know this.”

“Ha, well. Look, umm. Maybe I should just show you what I mean. Will you fuck me?”

“Yes, obviously?”

“I mean right now.” 

Mike looks at the couch, then back at Jay. 

“Here?” Mike says, as if they’re not both hard already. 

“Yes! Um. Here, like. Let me-- Give me your hand.”

Jay unbuttons his jeans and pulls the zipper down, and just watching him do so makes Mike’s cock throb. He’s wondering what they could use for lube, and if Jay’s ass could even possibly be ready for what he’s suggesting. Jay takes Mike’s hand and moves it to the small of his back, under the tail of his shirt and then down into the back of his jeans. He pushes Mike’s hand inside the waistband of his boxers, breathing harder already and arching, nodding, when Mike reaches in lower. 

“What am I-- Oh.” Mike’s eyes go wide when he feels something slick between Jay’s ass cheeks. It feels like lube, and, jesus christ-- “You’re, you--” Mike swallows heavily when he rubs his fingers down lower and finds Jay loosened and wet against the press of his fingertips, like-- “You got yourself ready for it?”

“God, nnh, no, I had no idea what was going to happen with you, us, just. I-- Last night. Like I said, I. Missed you, and. I couldn’t sleep. So I tried to do it myself, like you did, and, jesus. I got, like-- Nnh, yeah, Mike--” Jay leans forward to pant a little, pressing his ass back against Mike’s circling fingers. “I, _ahhh_ \-- I got three in, and it felt okay, but-- Nothing, oh god nothing like that, please, yeah, keep going--”

“And you came to the shop like this?” Mike asks, pressing a fingertip inside. They both moan, Mike for how fucking _ready_ Jay feels and Jay for, well-- Presumably because he wants more. 

“Ah, yeah. Well. This morning, I did it again. Then, I just. I don’t know, I don’t know. Mike. I guess I did, hah-- Hope, you, you’d finish it for me, when I got here--”

“Then you started sobbing into a calzone?” Mike is so confused, turned on and wanting this more than anything but afraid that he’s missing some essential step, too.

“I didn’t plan that part!” Jay’s eyes shoot open, and he whimpers and nods when Mike pushes into him with just one finger, though, god, it feels like he could take two. “I, ah, see, This-- This is what I’ve been trying, trying to tell you--” Jay sighs and locks his gaze on Mike’s again, his hands tensing at the back of Mike’s neck. “I’m really weird about sex,” he says, face blazing. “I think about it. A lot. I’m kind of. Compulsive, and I need-- A lot.”

“Fuck,” Mike says, nodding. “Me too.”

“Nnnh, no, you don’t-- You should be fucking terrified of how much I want you, okay? You should be running away-- It’s, it’s going to overwhelm you, and you’re going to think I’m a freak, like, for real--”

“No, fuck that!” Mike shoves his finger in deeper, as if to demonstrate how untrue this. Jay moans from someplace low in his chest and throws his head back, his spine going soft against Mike’s palm when he rubs his other hand up under Jay’s shirt. “Jay, look at me,” Mike says, staring up at him while he goes nuts for this.

Jay pinches his eyes shut, winces and shakes his head.

“Please,” Mike says, stroking his thumb over the small of Jay’s back. “It’s okay, c’mon.”

Jay sighs hugely and obeys, tipping his head forward and shyly meeting Mike’s gaze. 

“You could never scare me away,” Mike says. “Maybe the average person, maybe anyone else but me, I don’t know, but who cares? I get it, I want it, everything, so don’t fucking hold back for me, because you don’t have to. Okay? Please, please. Trust me.”

Mike is pretty sure Jay isn’t even that exceptional in this regard, just that his actual fetish is berating himself for wanting to get fucked. As long as he’s getting off on it, Mike can work with that. He does get it now, feels like he can see all the way into Jay while his finger squirms inside him and he opens his mouth for Jay’s frantic, grateful kisses.

“Put another one in,” Jay says as soon as he pulls free from Mike’s mouth. His eyes are hazy with some kind of unchecked lust that Mike wants to lick off him like sweat.

“Are you sure?” Mike asks, though he’s definitely going to, was already plotting. “Mine are so much bigger than yours.” 

Jay groans and tips forward a little, nodding. He leans back again to watch as Mike reaches into the front of Jay’s pants with his free hand and tugs out his cock, stroking him until he’s whining softly and rutting back against the feeling of Mike’s finger inside him, then forward to thrust his dick against Mike’s hot palm. 

“God, you need it so bad,” Mike says. “It’s fucking hot,” he adds when Jay peeks at him uncertainly. 

“I do,” Jay says, whispering this like a confession, his ass clenching up around Mike’s finger. “Please, please, I do, Mike, I need it.”

“Poor Jay. And you thought you had no one to give it to you. No one but me can give you what you need, can they?”

“Nn, Mike--”

“Shh, I’m here. Gonna take care of you now, don’t worry. Here we go, let me shift you a little.” 

Mike scoots Jay back on his legs so he can unzip his own pants, so hard now that it hurts against the front of his jeans. It’s a relief to pull his cock out, and to hear Jay moan softly for the sight of it, his hand going right to Mike’s shaft, squeezing. He holds Mike possessively, insistently, and Mike is gonna come so hard but not yet, not yet. He nudges Jay forward again, until Jay’s cock lines up with his, and wraps his hand around both of them, pumping his fist loosely while Jay watches, open-mouthed, his ass tightening up around Mike’s finger. 

“Try to relax a little, okay?” Mike says, whispering this up into Jay’s face while he nudges at him with a second finger, testing.

“Yes, yeah, please--”

“Fuck, but. We need lube.”

“I have it,” Jay says, eyes fluttering shut. He points to the floor, to his hoodie. “In there, in the pocket.” 

“You so knew this was happening,” Mike says, gleeful. He leans over to grope for the hoodie, noticing now how heavy it feels.

“I didn’t know,” Jay says, mumbling. “I just-- Hoped. And wanted to be prepared.” He takes the hoodie from Mike and reaches into the front pocket to pull out the lube, a narrow little bottle with the words SLIQUID ORGANIC LUBRICATING GEL on it. 

Mike almost laughs. Jay bought organic lube with a pun in the name. It’s perfect. He takes it from Jay and gives him a wet kiss on the cheek. 

“You really fingered yourself with this last night?” Mike asks, in love with the mental image and wondering if Jay would let him watch sometime. 

“And this morning,” Jay says, red-faced. “I couldn’t-- Stop. That’s how I am. Like when I come-- You saw. How I get. I just want more. Already, right away. Even if it hurts, I always want more. I never wanted anyone to see me like that, how I get, how I am, but-- You, it-- Just. Felt good, showing you.”

Mike moans and crushes his mouth to Jay’s. They’re still kissing while Mike pulls his finger out slowly, and when he reaches behind Jay’s back to slick up his fingers with lube. 

“You were dead fucking wrong when you said you’re not perfect for me,” Mike says, staring up at him, awed. 

Jay makes a soft sound under his breath and smiles, arms looped around Mike’s neck. He rubs at the short hairs at the back of Mike’s neck and arches to allow Mike’s hand back down into his pants. He’s trembling a little while he waits to feel Mike inside him again. 

“Did you like it?” Mike asks, rubbing his fingertips around Jay’s softened rim, feeling how wet and worked-over he is already. “Touching yourself here? Felt good?”

“It was-- Yeah, but--”

“Hmm?”

“Not even a little bit as good as you doing it, _please_ , Mike, just, please--”

“Okay, shh, just lean forward a little, put your head on my shoulder. There you go, good.” Mike reaches up under Jay’s shirt with his other hand and rubs his back, waits for him to calm down a little. He’s breathing so hard. “You’re okay, I got you. Just relax, there, yeah. Just let me in.” 

Jay moans and brings his hands up to grip Mike’s shoulders, pressing back for more as soon as Mike breaches him with two fingers. Mike is taken off guard by how tight Jay still feels, stretching around him as he pushes in slow. When Jay turns his face and presses it to Mike’s throat, Mike can feel his eyelids flinching and his jaw tightening. 

“Hurts?” Mike asks, pausing.

“So good,” Jay says, nodding and wrapping his arms around Mike’s neck. “Keep, keep-- _Ahh_ , yeah, nnh--”

“You like that?” Mike asks, murmuring this into Jay’s ear as he sinks his fingers all the way in, starting to shake a little himself just for how fucking hot Jay feels inside, and for the thought that Jay’s shorter fingers couldn’t have gone this deep, that even three at once probably weren’t as thick as two of Mike’s. “Hmm?” Mike asks when Jay doesn’t answer. He pulls his hand out from under Jay’s shirt and reaches up to grip the back of Jay’s neck, squeezing gently. 

“Mike,” Jay says, voice pinched. He’s holding on to Mike tightly, face still hidden. 

“Yes?”

“Fuh, just--” Jay hisses and moves his hips a little, gasps. When he does it again he’s less cautious, fucking himself back onto Mike’s fingers in needful twitches. “Oh,” he says, and his mouth stays open against Mike’s throat, drooling a little. “Oh-- _oh_ , Mike--”

“Yeah, that’s what you needed,” Mike says, squeezing the back of his neck again. Doing so makes Jay shift his hips back a little more desperately, and his breath comes faster. “Right?” Mike prompts, squeezing again. 

“Yes, yes, and--”

“And what?” Mike asks when Jay cuts himself off, whimpering. Mike is dragging his fingers in and out of Jay shallowly but at a steady pace now, not missing that Jay is both trying to fuck himself back onto them more urgently and line his dick up so that it rubs against Mike’s every time he snaps his hips forward again. 

“I need, ah--” Jay says, sitting back and letting Mike see his face when he says this. He looks all raw again, like he did after he cried, but differently now. “More, please, just-- Faster, harder, or--”

“Or?”

“Your dick, nnh--” Jay hisses and bares his teeth, really grinding his hips back now. “Mike, please. Just, just promise me I can have it, please.” 

Mike groans and kisses him on the mouth, nodding and fucking his fingers in a little harder.

“I promise,” Mike says. “Promise you can have my cock, yep, yes. Right in here where you need it.” Mike gives a particularly long, sharp thrust of his fingers and watches Jay’s face slacken with pleasure, head tipping back. 

“You can’t, can’t make fun of me for this, remember,” Jay says, eyelashes fluttering. “For needing this so much.” 

“I’m not, god. This is me worshipping you, Jay. Take note.”

Jay snorts, but he looks like he enjoys the idea, is grinning.

“I do have one really dark desire that I know you’re not gonna let me do,” Mike says. He’s already barely resisted it three times in the past five minutes.

Jay tilts toward Mike again, and his needy grinding halts for a moment.

“Yeah?” Jay says, looking interested.

But Mike knows he’s not going to be interested in this.

“I want to call you names,” Mike says. “Really disgusting things, like. Baby, sweetheart--”

“Mike, no! No pet names.” 

Mike grins, though he really does want to say these things. He just knew Jay would respond like that, and knowing what he’ll like or not feels good, too. 

“Fine, Jay,” Mike says. “Just know that I’m thinking of you as my sweetheart from now on.”

Jay wrinkles his nose and laughs, his head dropping onto Mike’s shoulder again. He groans and thrusts his hips back, squeezes Mike’s neck with both arms. 

“Hey,” Jay says. He sounds suddenly lucid, lifts his head and presses his lips to Mike’s cheek. “You can eat my heart, too, you know,” he says, using the jokey little voice he puts on when he wants someone to think he’s not taking himself too seriously: the voice that means he absolutely is serious, especially so.

Mike moans and gives Jay a one-armed hug, licks his throat. He thinks of the way Jay burst into tears after cutting that calzone in two, when he asked Mike to share it with him, and oh, god. That was Jay’s defrosted little heart on a plate, wasn’t it? No wonder Mike ate his half of it as fast as he could, before doing anything else and despite the fact that it was burning his tongue with every bite. No wonder Jay sobbed while he watched Mike swallow it down.

After more making out and fingering Jay open for as long as they both can stand it, Mike carries him over to the couch. Jay doesn’t want Mike to use a condom, but also instructs him not to come inside him. He wants to be on his hands and knees, pants shoved down, Mike fucking him from behind. Yes, even the first time, Mike. Jay takes his shirt off and asks Mike to open his, presumably so Jay can feel Mike’s chub and chest hair against his back while they fuck.

Mike is a hundred percent into every detail of this. He wants the weirdest possible requests, hopes true strangeness is in their future together. 

“You good?” he asks when he’s in position, teasing his lube-slicked cockhead between Jay’s spread open ass cheeks. He moans when he catches on the rim and Jay gasps. 

“I’m so good,” Jay says, sounding like he’ll cry. He looks back over his shoulder at Mike, bashful, begging. “Did you lock up for lunchtime?” he asks. 

“Uhhh--”

“Oh, who cares, just do it, please, I can’t wait any longer. Customers have caught us doing worse.” 

Mike grins, and when Jay smiles back at him it’s like they’re already connected. Mike can feel it, a physical thing that passes between them, heavy in the air. Not everybody gets this, he thinks. Not everybody has a person alive in the world at the same time as them who is the answer to every question they’re asking by existing, having a body, wanting things at all. 

He presses inside Jay and holds his gaze for as long as he can, which isn’t long at all. Jay’s eyes pinch shut, and he turns to hide his face and his moans against the couch cushion. Mike keeps his eyes open and watches himself disappear into Jay a little at a time, trying to focus on the visual and to not think too much about how good it feels to sink into the tight, slick, overwhelming heat of him, ‘cause he’s already going to come way too soon. 

“God,” Mike says when he’s all in, having kept his promise to not ask Jay if he’s okay even once, to just do it. Jay is shaking in Mike’s encircling arms, so tight around him and clenching even tighter in little pulses, breathing in reedy exhales against the couch. Mike strokes Jay’s chest, feels him shiver and press into the touch. Mike doesn’t even want to thrust yet, feels incredible just like this, wrapped around Jay from behind and nuzzling at his neck, buried deep inside him. He gets it now, why Jay wanted their first time to be like this, front to back. Somehow not being able to peer at each other and laugh nervously makes it better, more intimate in some weird way. It’s like a trust exercise. 

Jay makes a soft noise that seems like a signal that it’s okay for Mike to talk, or move, or maybe he’s just expressing gratitude for Mike faithfully doing this exactly how Jay asked him to. Mike has been checking Jay’s okay-ness via reaching down to touch his dick, making sure he’s still hard. Jay is dribbling steadily for this, stiff and wet all down the shaft from Mike’s stroking fingers. Mike rubs his face against Jay’s jaw, nudging at him, wanting him to say something.

“Feel good?” Mike asks, deciding this is different enough from asking Jay if he’s okay, technically allowed.

“Mike,” Jay says, so broken and soft that Mike moans, shifting against him a little. “ _Ahh_ , yeah--” Jay says, and he shifts, too, shaking all over. “That fuh, felt, please, do that again--”

Mike twitches his hips just a bit. They both moan, and Mike whimpers for how good it feels against his chest and around his cock, Jay’s moan reverberating through his body, everywhere. 

Things move pretty quickly after that, to the point that Mike starts to worry he won’t have enough warning when his orgasm slams into him and will end up pumping at least some of his come right into Jay. He wants to, if he’s honest, but wants to do exactly what Jay asked him to even more. He bites Jay’s shoulder when he’s fucking into him in sharp little shunts, unwilling as of yet to pull back enough to really slam in hard, because he’d have to let go of Jay a little in order to do so, would have to pull his sweaty chest off Jay’s back. 

“Tell me something,” Mike says when he’s close and needs to get his bearings, trying to decide if it’s time to pull out and jack off into the handful of paper towels that Jay made him prepare for that purpose, waiting on the back of the couch. 

“Some-- What-- Huh?” Jay asks when Mike bites at his shoulder again, getting his attention.

“Tell me something revealing,” Mike says, thrusting just shallowly, too slow. “Ah, about. Your fantasies. I want to hear it, want to know.” 

Jay whines softly and squeezes around Mike’s dick, trying to prompt him back into action. 

Only words will work, Mike decides. He tweaks Jay’s nipples until he’s hissing and bucking a little, waits. 

“What, like-- I don’t know.” Jay sobs, trying to fuck himself back onto Mike. It doesn’t work, because Mike has his arms around him again, is holding him close, keeping him still. “You, I, hah, okay. Listen, um. I used to, I mean, I’ll-- If I let myself say your name, when I’m jerking off? Oh, god. I come so hard. And fuh, feel so guilty.” 

“No need to feel guilty,” Mike says. “I jerk off to the thought of sticking my tongue up your ass, guilt free.”

Jay laughs, and Mike could die for how good it feels around his dick: the convulsing squeezes of his body and the pure joy of it, too. 

“You’re insane,” Jay says, still grinning when Mike leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth. 

“Oh, you’re allowed to make fun of my secret desires but not vice versa, is that it?”

“You’re--! It’s, ah--! Okay, fine. Fair enough.”

“Fair enough like, you’re gonna let me eat your ass?”

“Don’t call it eating, oh my god. Mike! Fuck me, just, please fuck me, _please_.”

Mike does, but not for much longer before he has to pull out and grab for the paper towels, unloading into them with a groan while Jay flops over to watch, breathless and heavy-lidded. Jay is still hard, and Mike is still shaky with aftershocks when he drops down to take Jay’s dick into his mouth. As soon as he rubs his fingertips around Jay’s fucked open ass experimentally, Jay shouts and comes, crying Mike’s name out over and over while he holds his head in place, making sure he swallows every drop. Mike wants to laugh when Jay keeps him there, and wants to award himself a fucking medal when he makes Jay come again after much shaking and sobbing, Jay’s hands clawed atop Mike’s head the whole time. 

It’s like magic, fucking him that hard and then sucking two orgasms right out of him, back to back, like something from another planet, like the greatest, greatest thing Mike has ever done. 

Jay is an absolute mess in the aftermath, incoherent and trembling. Mike wants to lock the shop’s door, but he can’t drag himself away from Jay long enough to do it, so he just crowds around him and hides him against the back of the couch, blocking the view of anyone who might wander into the open doorway that leads out to the shop’s front room. Jay hiccups little sob-like sounds of exhausted surrender, clings to Mike and curls up against him like he wants to stay hidden, too, where only Mike will ever see him like this. 

“You okay?” Mike asks when Jay musters the mental acuity to lift his head and kiss Mike weakly on the lips, licking at him in tired little swipes of his tongue. 

“You’re not allowed to ask that,” Jay says, and he grins. “Yeah, though. I’m good. Mike.”

“Yes?”

“Did you know this would happen?”

“This-- What? Fucking in the back room?”

“Yeah, and, just. Did you agree to do the fake boyfriend thing because you thought you could win me over that way? Like, with your arm around me, and--” Jay swallows, sniffles. His face is all splotchy, eyes red-rimmed. “Just. Did you know.” 

“Nope,” Mike says. “I wish. I didn’t know anything. I was so fucking terrified about how it might all blow up that I, uh. Brought up the old fight and blew it up myself, as you’ll recall.”

“Mhmm.” Jay doesn’t look like he’s afraid to talk about the fight anymore, is still smiling and pushing his fingers through the hair on Mike’s chest. 

“Did _you_ know?” Mike asks. “Was this all your devious plan, is that what you’re trying to tell me? Gloating that it worked so well--”

“I just wanted to know what it felt like,” Jay says. He looks up from Mike’s chest, eyes not quite wet but a little glittery, all the usually-hidden things there sparkling like asphalt after rain. “To be with you, like that. I thought it was my only chance.” 

“How did you miss how much I wanted that, for real? You saw the picture!”

“The one my sister sent me?”

“Yes, goddammit, that’s how I’ve been looking at you since-- I don’t know, since the first time we watched a movie together. You always laughed at the right parts. I remember thinking that one of the things I liked about you was that you have blond eyelashes. And then thinking, wait, what the fuck? And then, oh no.”

Jay snorts and presses his lips together, petting Mike’s face apologetically and trying to hold in real laughter.

Mike glares at him, then grins. It’s weird, unfair maybe, but he’s kind of addicted to being laughed at by Jay, along with everything else. 

“Sorry,” Jay says. “I can’t make fun of you for this, actually. I remember thinking, uhh. Some crazy shit.”

“Like what, Jay.”

“Oh, god. Ask Lizzie sometime. I used to call her up and rant about every micro expression you’d given me at work. Like, this is why Mike is fucked up, blah blah. And the reason was always that you weren’t in love with me, but I tried to come up with other explanations.”

“I was in love with you, though,” Mike says, giving Jay an appreciative squeeze, because oh god he offered that up freely, told Mike about those phone calls himself.

“How come you didn’t just tell me?” Jay asks. “I mean. According to you, you always knew I was gay.”

There’s a little sharpness in that, but it doesn’t cut deep enough to hurt either of them, not now.

“Didn’t think you’d want me,” Mike says.

“Why not?”

“Um, well. You pretty clearly detailed all my failings to my face, that one time.”

Jay moans and winces a little, moving his face closer to Mike’s.

“I was really yelling at you for not being in love with me,” Jay says. “And for fucking people who didn’t love you like I did. How dare you, et cetera.” 

“Well, _now_ I know that.” 

Mike kisses Jay’s forehead, wishing he could go back in time and find Jay crying in his room after that fight. Mike would want to hold him and tell him everything, all the truths that he didn’t even have words for in his own mind yet. He has no idea how Jay would have reacted to that back then, even now. It may have been too much. It may have been perfect, in some fucked up way, that they did a fifteen-year-long mating dance from hell instead.

Jay falls asleep against Mike’s chest, worn out, presumably having stayed up late the night before while spending some quality time with the Sliquid gel. Mike stays awake and pets Jay’s hair, feeling like he’s guarding Jay from the onslaught of potential customers who might burst through the shop’s unlocked front door any moment now. They’re still technically on shift, but they fell asleep on the job plenty of times even before they owned the shop. When the sex sweat cools on their skin and Jay starts to shiver a little, Mike moves to get the hoodie for him. 

“Nnh, wait,” Jay says, groping for Mike. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mike says. “Unless you want me to get up and lock the front door?”

Jays just sighs, still asleep. He whines again when Mike pulls free to reach across the floor and grab the hoodie. Mike wonders if Jay would wake up and protest if Mike called him baby right now. He doesn’t dare it, not even in a whisper, just wraps the hoodie around Jay and holds him close again. 

Eventually Mike falls asleep, too, and he wakes up when Jay is stirring against him, sitting up and yawning. Mike blinks up at him, a little nervous about what happens next. If Jay is really as insatiable as he claims, maybe he’ll want to fuck again?

“Mmph,” Jay says, wincing and pushing his arms into the sleeves of his hoodie. He fixes his own hair, then Mike’s. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know, who cares? God, that’s hot.” 

“What?” Jay frowns and looks down at himself. 

“You sitting there in a hoodie with nothing on underneath, unzipped.” Jay also looks fucked out, almost feverish, like he’s recovering from some illness. 

“Oh.” Jay reaches into the hoodie and scratches at his bare chest. He glances over at the table, wistful. “I’m starving,” he says. 

“Say no more.” 

Mike rolls away from him and zips his pants up, going for the calzone. He brings it back to the couch and delivers it to Jay, who laughs at the sight of it. The thing is legitimately soggy from Jay crying onto it. 

Mike sits beside Jay and watches him eat it. Jay is half-slumped onto Mike’s chest, sighing and sweet. Mike can’t stop staring at him. Jay looks cute when he eats. Everything he does is fascinating. Mike doesn’t care that he’s lost his mind for this: he stopped caring about that days ago, or maybe years ago.

“So what now?” Jay asks, looking over at Mike when he’s popped the last bite of calzone into his mouth, still chewing. 

“Whatever you want,” Mike says, meaning it. 

Jay swallows and leans over to kiss Mike, letting him taste the calzone’s comforting blandness on his tongue. 

“I loved that so much,” Jay says when he pulls back.

“The calzone?”

“Yeah, Mike, the calzone. It was fucking awesome.” 

“Glad to hear it.”

“I meant the other thing, dummy,” Jay says. He reaches into Mike’s shirt, which is still unbuttoned, and rubs his chest. “Thank you for, um. Doing it the way I wanted.” 

“Wasn’t exactly a hardship. But you’re welcome.” 

Jay looks up at Mike and smiles. Mike smiles back, feeling like he’s about to hear a grand love declaration. 

“Do you really want your tongue in my ass?” Jay asks. “Really?”’

“Why’s that so hard to believe.”

“And you really want to call me dorky pet names, don’t you? You weren’t just joking?”

“It’s my dearest wish, but for you I can suppress it.”

“I feel bad denying you these things.”

“Don’t,” Mike says. He’s pretty sure Jay is going to come around on the ass eating eventually, for one. 

“Tell me something you want, and we’ll do it,” Jay says. “Right now, I promise.” 

“Oh, Jay. You don’t have to promise that. I basically just got a boner for watching you eat that calzone.” 

Jay grins and glances down at Mike’s lap to see if this is true.

“It was a boner of the heart,” Mike says, because he wasn’t being literal. 

“C’mon,” Jay says, tugging on Mike’s collar. “I want to do something for you, really.”

“Hmm. Well. There is one thing I’ve always wanted real bad from you.”

“What’s that?” Jay asks, eyes lighting. 

Mike can barely contain how happy he is, watching Jay wait to hear what Mike wants from him, still a little tender-looking from crying, getting fucked, coming twice, and napping in mid-shift.

“Come to the movies with me and I’ll show you,” Mike says. “It can only happen there.”

He laughs when Jay’s expression turns a little wary, then more curious, interested.

“Is this something we’re going to get arrested for?” Jay asks. 

“Thankfully no.”

When they were younger and more insecure, they would leave a seat open between them when they went to the movies together. Sometimes this wasn’t possible, if it was opening weekend for something big, and they’d be forced to sit next to each other, close in the dark. Mike secretly loved this, and knowing now that Jay probably did, too, makes him wish he’d long ago tried licking Jay’s cheek after leaning over to mutter some comment that made him laugh. 

At least he can do it now, and more, all the things he’s longed for in the dark of a movie theater over the years: he holds Jay’s hand when the lights go down, rubs Jay’s leg, reaches over to squeeze his bicep. Jay allows all of this, laughing a little under his breath at moments but never flinching away from what Mike has deeply desired maybe more than anything else that comes with having Jay like this at last, with no empty seat or anything else between them. By the end credits they’re shamelessly making out, Mike’s arm around Jay’s shoulders and Jay holding Mike by the front of his shirt, keeping him close. 

It’s snowing when they leave the theater. Mike stands outside under the old-fashioned marquee and watches Jay put on his gloves. 

“You realize that was our first date,” Mike says. “Right?”

“Yep,” Jay says, gloves secured. “I knew you’d be into some weird fetish stuff, Mike. First dates, hand-holding. What’s next? I’m afraid to find out.”

Jay grins and peers up at Mike like he’s going to let Mike kiss him even here, with midwesterners streaming out of the theater behind them and heading toward their cars. 

“I don’t want to be away from you yet,” Mike says, a little breathlessly, and it’s tantamount to answering Jay’s jokey question, because Mike is also into sappy emotional confessions. 

“Who says I’m going away? Come over to my place. I’ll make you something for dinner.” 

Jay doesn’t have any food at his apartment after the time spent out of town, so they stop at Pick N Save for something to cook. Mike has to pretty much constantly restrain himself from blurting how much he loves this already: shopping together, going back to Jay’s place, hanging their coats up next to each other on the dorky rack in Jay’s foyer. It’s not like they’ve never done this stuff together before. It just feels different now, better, more complete, because if Mike wants to reach over and aimlessly touch the small of Jay’s back while watching him fill a pot with water at his kitchen sink, he can, and does.

“Quit hovering and go chop the garlic,” Jay says. 

“Yes, master.”

“Oh god. I’m not into that.” 

“Ironic that you don’t want to dom me, Jay, considering you’ve been doing it effortlessly for years.”

“Yeah, I was really domming the hell out of you when you were fucking me in the ass earlier.”

Mike laughs hard. Jay grins down at the pot of water, clearly pleased with himself. 

They make pasta for dinner and Jay eats a lot of it while whining that he gained weight during the trip and that he has to go for a run in the morning. Mike can’t see that he’s gained anything but lets him obsess and drinks red wine along with him, thinking maybe he could try to lose a few pounds himself, though he’s sure as shit not going running in the winter wonderland out there, or anyplace else for that matter.

Mike helps Jay do the dishes, not sure if he’s going to be allowed to stay. It’s the night of their first date, but they’re also so wedged under each other’s skin at this point that there’s no reason to be apart ever again, right?

“It’s really coming down out there,” Mike says, standing at Jay’s kitchen sink and watching through the window as the snow continues to fall. “And I’ve had like half a bottle of that wine. Better not drive.” 

“You can stay,” Jay says. He’s trying not to smile, staring at the dish he’s drying. “Jesus, you don’t need an excuse. I told you.” He puts the dish down and looks up at Mike. “I missed you. Last night, in bed. A lot.” 

“C’mere, you,” Mike says, in lieu of oh my god I love you, I love you, please don’t ever leave my side again. He kisses Jay hard enough to communicate those things, anyway.

The last time Mike stayed up all night talking to someone was when he was a kid, basically. He wouldn’t have described himself as a kid back then, in his early twenties, but looking back now it’s clear that’s what he was, when he was still thin and dirt broke, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Jay was the person he stayed up talking to, sitting on that mattress, both of them wired instead of drunk, talking about everything they cared about back then, which was mostly movies and the idea that they were going to make them. 

Jay’s ideas were so bad. Mike’s were worse. But listening to each other go on and on about them was the whole point. Mike remembers wondering by moonlight what to call Jay’s eye color exactly, and trying to figure it out again later, in the light of day. He could never just ask, of course. That would make Jay wonder why he needed to know. It seems now like they had so many chances to just jump each other over the years, but that night when they talked until dawn was before they’d even had their fight. There was a lot of ground still left to cover, Mike supposes.

They burrow into Jay’s bed together after dinner, Mike in his boxers and Jay in some flannel pants that Mike finds adorable and can’t stop stroking, his hand on Jay’s hip under the blankets. For all his talk of being insatiable, Jay hasn’t initiated anything beyond lazy kissing since they got to his place. He can’t seem to stop touching Mike’s chest but otherwise seems content to just talk to him in the dark while the snow continues coming down hard outside. They stick mostly to lighter subjects, to take the edge off all the heavy stuff they’ve gone over for the past five days. 

“Did you reply to your sister?” Mike asks.

“What, to the picture she sent?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, why?” 

“Well.” Mike shrugs and moves a little closer. “What did you say?”

“I don’t know, here.” Jay turns over with a grunt and reaches for his phone, which is on its charger on his bedside table. Mike moves with him and puts his chin on Jay’s shoulder, spooning up behind him while he opens the text conversation with Lizzie. Jay turns the phone so Mike can read his reply to her.

_That’s a good pic of us, thanks._

Mike grins and notes that Jay sent this a couple of hours after they’d fucked, when he’d regained his composure. 

“Boring,” Mike says. 

“What were you expecting?” Jay puts the phone back and rolls over, scooting down into Mike’s arms again. 

“I dunno,” Mike says. “Something like, hey, Lizzie, thanks for saving my life by sending this picture.”

“Oh, god. I was going to start crying and begging you to forgive me in about five more minutes anyway.” 

Mike grins and kisses him. He runs his fingertips up along the length of Jay’s spine under the blankets, softly, in a way that he’s figured out will reliably make Jay shiver and press closer to him. It works again, and Jay sighs against Mike’s mouth this time, too.

“As far as I’m concerned, they can all go on believing we got together five months ago,” Jay says, pulling free to establish this, expression serious again. “Right?”

“Suuure.” Mike decides now is not the time to tell Jay that he confided in Rich that this isn’t actually the case. He figures he can count on Rich to keep it a secret, anyway. Something about him just seems ironclad trustworthy. “Hey, when they get back from their honeymoon, we should hang out with Lizzie and Rich,” Mike says. “I really like that guy.”

“I knew you would. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Yeah, yeah, Jay. You’re right about everything, as usual.” 

Jay snorts and rolls over, pressing his back to Mike’s chest and pulling Mike’s arm around him like an additional blanket. Mike licks at Jay’s neck, chews on his ear a little. It’s going to take him a while to get used to feeling this good. He keeps wanting to fling himself back into panic that this might not last, even though he feels certain now that it will. Force of habit.

“So your family really liked me,” Mike says. “Seems like.” 

“Um, yeah? They’ve known you for years.” 

“Sure, sure, but they liked the idea of me making my move on you at last.” 

“Frankly I wish they wouldn’t think about it at all, but. Yes.”

“Then you are officially the only person I’ve ever dated whose family likes me, Jay. Congrats.”

Jay laughs. “That’s so weird,” he says. 

“It’s not that weird. I was an even bigger asshole last time I tried to have a steady girlfriend.” 

“No, I mean you saying we’re dating. Me and you, dating. That’s crazy.” 

Mike considers how to respond, a little hurt by the word ‘crazy’ as applied to this. Jay knows him well enough to understand that he’s fretting over this, which Mike would guess is why he puts his hand over Mike’s on his chest and squeezes a little. 

“It doesn’t sound like enough,” Jay says. “For what we are.” 

“Living together, then!” Mike says, either to lighten the moment or seal the deal. 

Jay snorts. Mike bites at his shoulder.

“I am so moving in here,” Mike says, mumbling this against Jay’s skin like an incantation. “May your dust-free apartment rest in peace.” 

“Why does having you here mean I’m going to stop dusting?” Jay is stroking Mike’s knuckles in a way that feels like an admission that Mike is right, he’s living here now, it’s done. 

“Oh god, do you have a little feather duster?” Mike asks, hugging him tighter for the thought. “And a-- French maid costume, perhaps?”

“Yes, that’s exactly how I clean. You guessed it.”

Jay doesn’t go for a run in the morning. They have sex again, all the world outside bright white with freshly fallen snow, then take a shower together, which leads to more sex. By the time they’re doing it on the couch in front of a movie Mike is beginning to understand what Jay means by wanting it a lot. 

It’s in his top ten favorite things about Jay, like, instantly.

Maybe even top three.


	9. Chapter 9

Six months later, Jay has gained ten pounds and Mike has lost twenty. The apartment is a little messier than it was before Mike moved in. Sometimes dishes are left in the sink-- Sometimes even by Jay himself, if he drops one there while letting Mike seduce him. 

They’re both a little wealthier, on account of Lizzie using her marketing genius to get them more wedding gigs. Filming weddings is often a pain in the ass, but there’s something Mike likes about it, though he also gets kind of sad about it at times. He wants to be married to Jay. He can admit that to himself, stupid as it is.

“Hey, look,” Jay says when they’re in bed together on a Monday morning in early October, running late for work at the shop but not too troubled by this, as with the wedding work coming in the shop is even more just an excuse for them to spend all their time together rather than a real business venture.

Mike is still half asleep when Jay moves the phone over so he can read the screen, and he has to blink and reread a few times to register what Jay is showing him. 

“Is that real?” Mike asks. He hasn’t kept up with the network of court cases, had assumed it would be a tangled non-starter for years to come.

“Yep,” Jay says. He of course doesn’t seem that impressed or excited, because he’s Jay and this is breaking news about marriage. Even the gay kind suddenly being legal in Wisconsin doesn’t mean much to him, Mike figures. 

“Guess we can branch out in our advertising,” Mike says, not wanting to get morose about the other thing they could do now. 

“Yeah, Lizzie is already texting me about that.” 

“Mhm, of course.”

“So do you still want to?” Jay asks, scrolling on his phone. 

“What?”

“Uhh, marry me?”

Jay looks over at Mike, trying to maintain his poker face and failing pretty much as soon as their eyes meet. Jay looks nervous, then terrified, is turning red.

“Are you joking?” Mike isn’t sure if his own question is serious or not. Jay would have to be pretty fucking cruel to tease him about this, but--

“Were you?” Jay asks, and Mike can hear the little shake that he’s trying to keep out of his voice. “When you asked?”

“Jay--” 

Mike smiles, sits up, needs to be on him but is afraid to make any sudden moves, can’t ruin this.

“That’s not an answer to my question,” Jay says, bright red now.

“Is your-- The question where you’re asking me to marry you? That one?”

“Ugh.” 

Jay drags a pillow over his face.

He makes the most pitiful little noise against the pillow when Mike starts kissing his chest, moving upward. Mike swoons in to kiss Jay’s neck and nudges the pillow out of the way. He bites his lip when Jay meets his eyes, feels his whole chest sort of hiccup. 

“Don’t fucking cry,” Jay says. 

Even though he’s the one who’s wet-eyed. 

“I’m just embarrassed,” Jay says when Mike leans in to kiss the corners of his eyes, carefully. “You know my eyes water when I’m--”

“Yes,” Mike says. “I do. Know that. And yes I was serious, yes, I still want to, yes, yeah, yep--”

Jay moans and grabs Mike by the ears, kissing him to shut him up and to hide his face against Mike’s, though there’s no doing that, really, because Jay’s is burning hot and Mike can feel it.

Later, much later, after multiple rounds of sex in bed and deciding the repair shop is going to stay closed today in honor of this historic occasion, Mike sends a text to Rich, who has become like his best friend in the past six months, if Jay is disqualified for also being his boyfriend-- fiance, now, he supposes.

_So Jay asked me to marry him this morning._

He doesn’t have to wait long for a response.

 _Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat !_

Then another one:

_Cool._

“What’s so funny?” Jay asks, rolling over in bed to observe Mike’s phone. They’ve resigned themselves to staying in bed together all day, celebrating. 

“I told Rich that we’re getting married and he said ‘cool.’”

Jay laughs and presses his face to Mike’s shoulder. He’s had three orgasms since the morning and is dozy.

“Sounds about right,” he says. “But now I’m gonna get an angry text from my sister because Rich knew before her.” 

“Oops, sorry.” 

“It’s fine. Actually, here. I’ll go ahead and text her now. She’s probably at work, and he’s home playing video games. Maybe he didn’t immediately text her.”

Mike watches over Jay’s shoulder as he composes the text making this announcement, which will quickly spread from Lizzie to the rest of the family:

 _Hey, me and Mike are going to get married. You’ll be my maid of honor, okay? Or whatever you call it. Rich can be Mike’s._

“What’s our wedding theme gonna be?” Mike asks when Jay tosses the phone aside.

“Milwaukee,” Jay says, rolling against Mike’s chest. “Or beer, maybe.”

“Same thing, basically.” 

“Yeah. I don’t know. I want to get married in a brewery, is that stupid?”

“It’s perfect,” Mike says, reeling for the fact that Jay has given this any thought at all. 

“And it’s got to be on or around Halloween.” Jay’s face is half-hidden against Mike’s chest while he says this, as if he’s embarrassed by his interest in the subject even now. “Because I want the decorations to be tastefully spooky.”

“Of course,” Mike says. He’s stroking Jay’s back, feeling like he’s going to rocket through the ceiling with glee. 

“Everyone who came to Lizzie’s is gonna expect to come to ours,” Jay says, with some measure of dread. 

Jay’s phone rings before Mike can respond. It’s Lizzie calling. Jay groans and grabs for the phone but doesn’t answer yet. He gives Mike a look. 

“What about you?” Jay asks. “What are your, uh. Wedding demands?”

Mike snorts. Jay makes it sound like a hostage negotiation. Mike is okay with that, actually.

“Answer your phone and I’ll tell you later,” Mike says, because he needs some time to think about it. 

“Hello?” Jay says, making his voice as glum as possible. He still doesn’t like talking about his feelings, and Mike can’t even imagine how he’ll get through a wedding ceremony without melting. He can’t wait to see it.

“Oh my god!” Lizzie says. Mike doesn’t need to put his ear to Jay’s phone to hear her loud and clear. “Are you pranking me?”

“No, it’s real.”

“Oh my god! Okay, wow. He couldn’t even wait one day to ask you, huh? As soon as it was legal, bam, just like that?”

“I asked him many months ago,” Mike says, loud enough for her to hear. “He just answered me today.”

“It was part of an ongoing discussion,” Jay says. “Obviously legal logistics were involved.”

“Romantic as fuck,” Lizzie says. “As usual.”

Mike gets up to take a shower while Jay talks to his sister. He mostly just stands under the water yawning, thinking about what he wants from a wedding. Anything, really. He would get married in a literal dumpster with a rat as the officiant, as long as he thereafter gets to be Jay’s big gay husband for the rest of his life. 

“I thought of one thing,” Mike says when he emerges. He’s wearing only a towel around his waist, hoping the sight of his chest will encourage Jay to indulge him in this request. It often helps. 

“One thing?” Jay is lying on his side in bed, the phone call concluded. He’s wearing a black t-shirt and black briefs, seems worn out but happy. 

“For the wedding, one thing I want.”

“Oh.” Jay looks worried, sits up a little. “Yeah?”

“I want us to write our own vows.”

“Oh, jesus, Mike, no--”

“I knew you’d hate the idea,” Mike says, holding up one hand. “And that’s okay. I won’t make you read something really personal in front of a bunch of people. But I thought, as a compromise, maybe we could do it right now. Just for each other.”

Jay makes a face, but it softens pretty quickly. He sniffs and drops down onto his back in bed, puts his hands over his belly. Shrugs.

“I guess you have something in mind?” he says. 

“I do in fact.”

“Oh, god. What, say it.”

“Jay,” Mike says, making his posture straighter, glad he’s doing this in nothing but a towel. “I never thought I’d want someone to own me, and then I met you. And for the next fifteen years or so I told myself I would never let you own me. Not you! Least of all you, you’re so tricky and always outmaneuvering me, and I hang on your every word, and you could stick your hand right into my chest if you wanted to, you could rip my heart right out. Hell, you’ve done it before! And then I looked up from my bullshit and saw it had already happened, you already owned me, and all I felt was relief. ‘Cause finally, finally I’m yours. I just want to roll around in that feeling for the rest of my life, so thanks for giving me the opportunity. Amen.”

“Amen?” Jay laughs hard, red-faced, shoulders bouncing. “Okay.”

“That’s your answering vow? Laughing at me and saying ‘okay?’ That’s perfect, actually, that says it all.”

“Shut up.” Jay sits up, cross-legged, and sighs. He licks his lips and looks down at his hands, then up at Mike again. “Mike,” he says, flushed all the way to his ears already.

“Yes?”

“Please don’t waste any more time wondering if I want this as much as you do. I want it so much. It’s the biggest thing about me.”

Mike drops the towel on the way to the bed and falls onto Jay, pressing him down with kisses. Jay wraps his arms and then his legs around Mike, moaning into the kiss like he can taste Mike’s profound understanding that is perhaps a little overdue, since Jay let Mike move in to his apartment and officially occupy every part of his life that had previously remained separate from the many, many parts Mike already occupied. 

“So that’s done,” Mike says, still on top of Jay, hard now but also not in a hurry. “We’re married.”

“Oh?” Jay says. He looks a little wistful, like he thinks Mike is serious and now Jay won’t be able to decorate a brewery’s event space with tasteful Halloween accents. 

“I mean, we’ll still do a ceremony. But we’ve said the vows now, Jay. The secret vows.”

Jay snorts and shakes his head, closes his eyes. He lets Mike lick his neck and moans a little, humping up against him. 

“You already had three,” Mike says, impressed that Jay is getting hard again. 

“My record is eight in twenty-four hours.”

“I’m well aware.” Mike was of course present and responsible for the record-setting streak.

“Maybe we should eat something first,” Jay says. 

“Need calories to keep up your stamina? I get ya. What are we going to serve at the wedding, by the way? Are guests going to bob for apples?”

“No.”

“Can we hire an actor to play the ghost that haunts that one brewery and have him scare people in the bathroom?”

Jay looks like he’s seriously considering this. He grins at the impressed look on Mike’s face. 

“I mean,” Jay says. “We’re definitely doing it at the haunted brewery.”

“You believe in love _and_ ghosts now? Wow, my impact.”

“I do not believe in ghosts! That’s just what you call that place, whether you believe it’s actually haunted or not, which I don’t. It’s appropriately spooky for the occasion, that’s all.”

“Are we gonna be doused in fake blood at the altar?”

Jay ponders this, again with seeming seriousness.

“I like the idea,” he says. “But it would probably alienate our guests.”

“Fuck the guests, this is _our_ special day!”

Jay laughs and lets Mike kiss him again. Mike debates telling Jay he would let him do that, with the fake blood, that he would let Jay do anything. Jay knows it, anyway, and not just in the context of their wedding. They once sort of lost their minds while attempting to make a cheesy horror film together and threw whole buckets of fake blood onto each other while laughing hysterically, red-dyed corn syrup getting into their mouths and slipping under their feet until they were both falling over, soaked in the stuff from head to foot and looking like absolute lunatics. 

That’s how Mike always wants this to be, a cheerful emotional gorefest with nothing held back, both of them falling over laughing by the end of it.

Now he knows Jay wants that, too, as long as it’s out of sight from the rest of the world, like they were that day with the blood buckets and the mess they had to clean up afterward, just the two of them because they couldn’t afford a crew by a long shot. As long as they can be altogether unhinged when they’re alone together, it’s more than enough for Mike. It just took him a while to figure out how to prod Jay in that direction and keep him safe at the same time. Mike had to be both the pirate pointing his sword at Jay so he’d walk the plank and the sea creature who rescued him after he’d fallen into the ocean with his arms tied.

“I just thought of an even better vow,” Mike says. 

“Sorry,” Jay says. “That was a one-time offer, no take-backs.”

“Aww, okay. But it’s about pirates and sea creatures.”

“You’re the one who made a rule that we’re not allowed to talk about our feelings in weird metaphors anymore.”

“Only because yours are so fucking dark and demented!” 

Jay grins like this is a compliment.

They get married just a little over three weeks later, on Halloween night. It’s a Tuesday, so renting the event room at the haunted brewery isn’t too expensive. Rushing to put it all together also has the benefit of keeping their guest list small, though most of Jay’s annoying friends are able to attend, to Mike’s dismay. They at least offer to help with the catering, and the whole thing is more of a Halloween party than anything else, featuring a brief wedding ceremony conducted by Jack, in full skeleton makeup. 

Jay specified on the invitation, sent by email, that costumes are required for entry, but he doesn’t actually bar his parents from entry when they both show up in normal clothes. Mike wears his Spock costume, ears and all, and Jay is dressed up like a lumberjack in an adorable hat with fleece ear flaps. He also carries a real axe around all night, which Mike finds extremely hot for reasons he’s not sure he wants to unpack. Lizzie has an elaborate Disney princess costume and Rich just wears an old Bears jersey and says his costume is ‘deluded moron.’ 

“This is all a little crazy to me,” Jay’s mother confesses at one point, staring down at their wedding cake, which was made by one of Jay’s arty friends and has fake blood dripping down from the top tier, where two zombie action figures are making out. “But it’s very fitting,” she says, giving Mike a look like she feels for him, as if this isn’t exactly what he wanted, too. “For him, I mean.”

“Did you think he’d ever get married?” Mike asks her, a little drunk by then. They’re about halfway through the reception and the pizza bagels that two of Jay’s friends are passing around on trays are running low. 

“Oh, sure,” Jay’s mother says, scanning the crowd to find Jay. He’s standing with Lizzie, eating candy corn and drinking beer. He looks happy, Mike thinks, thumbing at the ring that’s on his finger now. “I knew it would have to be you,” Jay’s mother says, recapturing Mike’s attention. “But I thought, well. If he could get his first choice, he’d do it.”

“How’d you know I was his first choice?” Mike asks, wishing he’d figured it out sooner himself. 

“Mhm, well. Honestly, hun? He wasn’t super subtle about it.”

“Fair enough.” 

Mike crosses the room to Jay, needing to be closer to him. He lets Jay feed him a piece of candy corn, steals a sip from his beer and puts his hand on Jay’s waist. Jay leans back against Mike a bit, both of them half-listening to Lizzie talking about some experience with a ghost that she claims to have had as a kid. 

“See, your sister agrees with me,” Mike says, giving Jay a nudge. “About ghosts.” 

“You’d have to literally show me a ghost to get me to believe in them,” Jay says, peering up at Mike with tipsy adoration. Mike wants to taste that candy corn on his mouth. They’ll be spending their wedding night at a nearby hotel that’s also supposedly haunted, in keeping with their theme. 

“Maybe you’ll see one tonight,” Mike says, raising his eyebrows. “At the hotel.” 

“I’ve seen a ghost,” Edith says, appearing at Lizzie’s side. 

“Of course you have,” Jay says. 

They were all surprised when Jay’s father showed up with Edith as his date. Mike is starting to like her, actually, and this ghost claim makes him like her more. She’s also wearing a flapper costume, which makes her a good sport.

“Tell us, Edith,” Lizzie says, squeezing her arm. 

“Was it on a plane?” Mike asks. 

“No,” Edith says, giving him a smirk. “It was in an airport, though. At the Dallas airport there was this section that was undergoing renovations, but it was still partially functional. I slipped into the ladies’ room there after a flight, and it was deserted, pretty creepy. On my way out I almost bumped into this tiny woman who was on her way in. She was wearing a really twee uniform with a pillbox hat and everything. She was clearly a flight attendant, but she looked like she was from some airline that was stuck in the past, uniform-wise. She brushed past me kind of angrily and I turned back to give her a sarcastic apology, since she’d bumped into me like that, but she was gone. Totally disappeared. I looked under the stall doors and there was nothing, nobody in there.” 

“Were you on medication when this happened?” Jay asks. 

Mike gives him a poke in the ribs and tries not to laugh. Lizzie is wide-eyed like she’s impressed. 

“No medication,” Edith says, shrugging one shoulder. “It gave me the chills. I ran.” 

“Good call,” Mike says.

“What are you guys talking about?” Jay’s dad asks, walking over with Rich. 

“Edith had a supernatural experience,” Lizzie says. “In an airport.” 

“Oh, yeah, that. I don’t know about ghosts or whatever, but I’ve seen some weird shit at night out on Lake Michigan, I’ll tell you what.”

“Are we really doing ghost stories?” Rich asks, objecting. 

“Um, yes,” Lizzie says. “It’s Halloween! Also Jay’s wedding.” 

“Jay hates ghosts,” Mike says. 

“But he likes scary stuff.” Lizzie gestures expansively at their surroundings. “Obviously.” 

“It’s fine,” Jay says. “It’s Mike’s wedding, too, and he loves ghosts.”

“I don’t _love_ them, Jay. They just fascinate me.”

No ghosts appear to either of them that night in their spooky honeymoon hotel. They can’t afford a real honeymoon yet, but Mike doesn’t care. It feels like they had one already, during Lizzie’s wedding excursion and also for the past six months. It’s been euphoric to finally stop pretending they’re not in love with each other, which felt more like a full time job than working at the VCR repair shop ever did, at least to Mike, and now that the weight’s off his shoulders he’s not sure how he lived with it for so long, except that the alternative was living without Jay, which he tried for five months and couldn’t hack.

“Can’t believe you let yourself have hat hair on our wedding night,” Mike says when they’re lying in bed together in the musty-smelling hotel room, post-sex and close to falling alseep, both worn out from all the socializing. 

“I did it for you,” Jay says. “I know you like it when my hair’s all fucked up.”

“Oh god,” Mike says. He can’t stop running his fingers through it, enjoying how it’s crimped from the lumberjack hat. “It’s true.”

“I know what you like,” Jay says, in a way that makes Mike think they would definitely be having sex again if they weren’t both struggling to keep their eyes open already.

“Is that why we’re here?” Mike asks. “In a haunted hotel? Because you know that seeing a ghost with you is my dearest dream?”

“Yep. Because then you’d be able to tell me you told me so. What you’re missing here, Mike, is that proving ghosts aren’t real is _my_ dearest dream. And that’s what we’re really doing here.”

“You can’t prove that just by not seeing one!”

“If they were real, wouldn’t one show itself to you on your wedding night? As, like, a gift? From the afterlife? For all your enthusiasm toward their cause?” 

“You sound a little punch drunk, Jay.” 

“I planned a wedding in three weeks. Of course I’ve lost my mind.”

He rolls over so Mike will tuck himself around his back. Mike does so obediently, wrapping his arms around Jay from behind. The room they’re in is small and old-fashioned, cozy. The bed has carved wooden posts and there’s an unlit fireplace across from it. The fireplace apparently makes howling sounds in the night, according to the reports of this place being haunted. Mike is looking forward to that. Maybe Jay will get spooked and Mike will have to hold him tighter and tell him it’s okay. He can dare to dream, anyway, since so many of the things he once thought of as impossible are now real, wrapped up in his arms. 

“Thanks for doing it the way I wanted,” Jay says after a while, when Mike is starting to fall asleep. 

“Hmm?”

“The wedding.”

“Jay, I wore the Spock costume. There were pizza bagels. It was the wedding I wanted, too.”

Jay laughs and half-turns in Mike’s arms. Mike kisses his cheek. He feels like Jay wants to say something else, and he waits to hear it. He never knows what it’ll be, with Jay.

“Yeah, I love that about you,” Jay says. “Your weird shit somehow aligns with mine.” 

“Hence our marrying each other,” Mike says, not sure what Jay is getting at.

“Uh-huh. I love everything else about you, too.”

“Oh.” Mike squeezes him. “Thank you.”

“Even the ghost crap.”

Mike wonders if Jay is regretting not reading self-written vows in front of their loved ones. He kinda sounds like he’s composing some now.

“Anything else?” Mike asks, teasing him. 

“Um, yeah. So. My actual dearest dream is this, by the way. Like, feeling, like-- I can be whatever I am and not have to hide any of it. From at least one person. From you.” 

Jay’s cheek is hot when Mike kisses him there, and his eyes are closed. He swallows and adjusts back against Mike’s chest, smiles a little when Mike licks at the corner of his lips. 

“What would you have done if I just laid one on you when we were kids?” Mike asks. 

“Laid one on me?”

“Grabbed you and kissed you, Jay. Back then. Would that have been it? Together forever, already?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. How come?”

“Mhm, I don’t know. I was too scared, even though I wanted it. I wasn’t ready to actually do it.”

“Scared of me?”

“No, more like of-- Unleashing myself. Onto you.”

Mike snickers, can’t help it. Jay tries to stifle a laugh, but his shoulders are bouncing with it when he reaches back to touch Mike’s ear. Mike moans and rubs his hand over Jay’s bare chest under the blankets, thinks maybe they will have sex again tonight after all. 

“So what would you have done?” Mike asks, lingering on a nipple and grinning when Jay flexes back against him, pushing into the touch.

“What-- When? If you’d have kissed me when I was, what? Twenty?”

“Sure. That first or second year we knew each other.”

“Uhh, hmm. I might have burst into tears or faked some kind of sudden illness. Maybe both. I’d have run away, basically.”

“Aww, for good?”

“Oh fuck no. Probably for ten minutes. Then I would have reappeared and waited for you to try it again. I’d have never left your side, waiting, thinking I’d be ready next time.” 

“And would you have been?”

“Honestly? I don’t think I was ready until you put your arm around me at dinner that first night on the island. And you whispered some smart ass thing in my ear, and. After that I was so fucking ready it was all I could think about.”

“It?” Mike says, rolling Jay onto his back and leaning up over him. They’re both breathing a little harder. 

“Having you,” Jay says, arching up so Mike will feel him getting hard. “And, just. Everyone knowing. That I’m yours, that you got me, have me, you caught me--”

Mike kisses him before this can go into weird metaphor territory. He’s come around on what Jay was trying to get at when he compared himself to a final girl in a horror movie, but Mike thinks of himself more as a monster Jay tamed than anybody who’s ever been capable of outrunning him. Mike revealed his horrible dimensions to Jay from within a shadowy wood, and Jay crept a little closer, closer, curious, until finally Jay convinced Mike he wasn’t so horrible at all, mostly by showing Mike his own horrors. Then they went out into the village together in daylight, Mike’s monster arm around Jay’s tiny shoulders, and people just told them congratulations, it’s about time.

They’re both so tired after having sex again that Mike is pretty sure a whole army of ghosts could march through the room and they wouldn’t wake up. He even sleeps through the howling chimney noise, if it happens at all, and in the morning he wakes up with his face pressed between Jay’s shoulder blades. The room is quiet.

Mike rolls over to check for any sign of a spectral presence, though it’s past dawn and the witching hour has surely concluded. They seem to be in the room alone, and there’s a light dusting of snow falling outside. 

“Did we fuck with the curtains open?” Mike asks. 

Jay makes a soft noise against his pillow but doesn’t seem to really have heard the question, still asleep. Mike slips carefully out of bed and closes the curtains over both windows, not sure if he wants to believe that they were so hyped to fuck after their wedding that they forgot to shut them or that ghosts opened them during the night. He hurries back into bed with Jay and curls up around him, fully satisfied with either explanation.

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has TWO theme songs!:
> 
> [Close to Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YESpUqrKwS8) (my ultimate Mike/Jay theme song always ;__;)
> 
> and
> 
> [Ruin My Life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrPU_3Sndsw)
> 
> Thanks so much to all who read this far! This was a blaaaaast to write, I already miss it.


End file.
